Admittedly I wasn’t looking forward to the new Roland Joffre film ‘Captivity’, a blatant vehicle for Elisha Cuthbert and a vague attempt to cash in on the gross-out torturiffic horror films that are being churned out lately. The hype machine for this film is in full flow but honestly the studio should have saved their money to buy cocaine and hookers for the studio execs becuase they’re gonna need something to pick them up after this suck-fest bombs at the box office.

There was some cuffuffle a while back when the posters for this film caused a small stir in L.A, I’m sure just the reaction the studio was hoping for and hence they’re now billing the film as ‘Notorious’. I’d like to do a weak play on words and label it as ‘Not Glorious’ …. and then follow it up by referring to the film as ‘Craptivity’… BAM!… double wordplay! take that oxford english dictionary.. in your face… etc.

The 5ft 2″ Cuthbert laughably plays a famous Model .. so famous in fact she’s labelled ‘Americas Sweetheart’. There’s some scenes near the beginnning of the film that attempt to set up her ‘Glamourous life’ which seems to consist of going to photo shoots where she looks bored (that might have been her ‘vogue’ face actually.. I couldn’t tell), then attending weird parties filled with 10 good looking extras strutting around in the background while she sits alone. There’s a brief setup of her being stalked before said ‘Party’ and is subsequently snatched… in a very “what?.. no don’t do that… oh my god you fucking iddddddddddiot” kind of way.

by this point in the film my girlfriend was giving me the “Really?… are you really going to me me sit through this shit?” look…. but I made her tough it out till the end.

Ok.. here’s a rough outline of what happens next (spoiler free.. like it matters). Cuthbert wakes up in some kind of dungeon.. unknown captors, prison cell type space, stalker related material lying around.. you know the drill. Yawn. So she rattles around in there for a while and gets tortured…umm.. maybe twice.. lamely, then some other shit happens.. then there’s a ‘twist’, so obvious that anyone capable of concious thought could have seen coming.

The people in the screening I attended were laughing through a lot of the dialogue towards the end of the film, and even some of the later bits where Cuthbert gets vaguely hurt had people chuckling. Not the reaction the film makers wanted.. i’m sure. People who enjoyed ‘Hostel’ and films of a similar ilk would be better suited renting that film on dvd again, or digging up some 70’s exploitation… as the only shock you might get from ‘Captivity’ is realising that someone not on life-support actually gave this script the OK.

I’ve seen a lot of Horror, a lot of good, a lot of bad and a lot of unwatchable. This falls balls deep into the latter category. There is literally no way I could sit through this cinematic offal again…not even if the baby Jesus himself asked me to. Don’t believe the hype, it’s not good, it’s not scary and it sure as hell isn’t worth paying cinema admission for.