Review of Captivity (2007) by Billy B — 07 Dec 2009

Dissapointing. I'm not gonna lie, I have seen the theatrical version of the film, and only bought the DVD because I was told it was a totally different version. The Unrated DVD version is worse than the theatrical one. Those who hated the cinema film, will loathe the DVD because it lacks the character building and police sequences for torture scenes that don't help you be entertained at all. The theatrical film has alot of interaction between the two captive's Gary and Jennifer, and they help you like the characters more as the film proceeds, but the DVD scraps many key dialogue moments for scenes where they are being tortured for no reason, which in the end puts the movie as an insult to theatrical lovers. Police scenes in the cinema version keep you up to date, and make you root for them to capture the killer, but all that is taken away for chase scenes where we all know that they wont escape anyway. EVen the efficient amount of gore couldn't get me interested, and in all honesty, I believe the DVD release should feature both theatrical and unrated versions so fans of either can be bale to watch them both.

The plot was seemingly inspired to "Saw", and in no way succeeds in building the tension up, and not a single scene is able to terrify us. The theatrical edition features not enough character building, and the unrated cut basically has none. I do not understand why a studio who markets a DVD release stating "with scenes not seen in theatres" when basically 75% of the whole cinema experience was taken and replaced with bullshit sequences that you don't give a shit about.

The acting was nothing special. "Elisha Cuthbert" was amazing in "House of Wax", but seems confused and lost in the film. She canb't pull of a model, nor can she quite pull off the whole "scared out of my mind" expressions and emotions. Theatrically, the cast was better, and we saw more than the two main characters for the whole thing, whereas the "better" cut features basically just the two mains, and isn't able to keep us entertained.

Overall "Captivity's" theatrical version is nothing special, but is far superior than it's Unrated cut that would make even the worst of the worst movie's fans vomit. If your wanting to see this film, I reccomend the Theatrical version, which god knows how to find, because the DVD version is terrible. My rating is 1/5 (Theatrical version would probably get a 2.5/5 because majority of the movie is different... and better).