Camden New Journal - Movies: Captivity

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 21 June 2007

Horrific twist in director’s career

CAPTIVITY
Directed by Roland Joffe
Certificate 18

HOW the mighty have fallen! Roland Joffe created a terrific impact with his first two films – The Killing Fields (1984) and The Mission (1986), deservedly winning Oscar nominations for both. So what on Earth is he doing directing a slice of schlock horror like this filled with relentless lurid violence and torture scenes that will make your stomach churn?
We’re into Psycho territory again. The first victim in the opening scene in a dank New York basement is a naked woman strapped on a trolley with plaster-of-Paris hardening over her face, while a black-gloved hand administers a close-up injection. The screen runs red with gore. A hulking figure in a cloak and hood pulverises the plaster-of-Paris mask with a hammer.
Thanks for that, Mr Joffe. Is it entertainment? Shall we keep watching?
Concealed cameras record everything as the sicko moves on to kidnap a blonde fashion model (Elisha Cuthbert, who played Jack Bauer’s disaster-prone daughter in TV’s 24) and film her fate. Now we’re really into it, as she watches acid poured on to another screaming victim on video and the cellar turns into a slaughterhouse. How much more can she – and we – endure?
Horror movies are getting ever more graphic, disturbing and unhealthy (witness Hostel, and watch out for Hostel II next week), and there must surely be a point where they finally cross the line. Maybe they already have.
It is just a pity that a director of Mr Joffe’s calibre should lend his name to this unsavoury trend.

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