Secuestrados

Well i was very excited when i went to see this film at the Leeds Film Festival, and being 'Spanglish' i really wanted to like it...

Reading the film summary i believed we, as an audience, would have to endure some very scary, intense and probably uncomfortable scenes before, finally the tables would turn and the family would have their turn to fight back. This was certainly not an accurate summary of the film. The plot was completely different.

The acting wasn't very good. The only decent actor was the daughter of the family. The father and the mother weren't very believable in their acting or their decisions throughout the film. But the worst acting award must go to the the majority of the 'bad guys' who were terrible. Just not scary or believable And the ending? Not worth watching the whole film for. Disappointing overall, i left the cinema feeling a bit cheated.

I consider a home invasion to be one of the most paralyzing fears existing in the dark recesses of our minds. I'm not the quiet family type either, but the mere idea of it has always made me deeply uncomfortable.

In "Kidnapped," director Miguel Angel Vivas has succeeded in bringing the horror, confusion, and chaos into full lens view of what this may look like for a well-to-do and quiet family unit. Once the stage is set and hell breaks loose, the underlying theme of this film is head-spinningly chaotic.

The film follows the archetype of many of its genre predecessors: a perfectly normal (if not mundane) opening, initial chaos, breakdown of the plan amongst its instigators, and a fitting climax. If you've already seen a bunch of similar movies and are sick to death of the formula, you can skip "Kidnapped." I'm comfortable saying you wouldn't enjoy it.

But if you are like me, and are overcome at the deeply horrifying notion of the home invasion, and you are intrigued at the ways artists bring this to the screen -- you will find something much deeper, genuine, and unsettling about this movie than in your previous pursuits.

The winning ingredient is Vivas's seamless direction, weaving an excessively intense story over twelve long cuts (no "A" and "B" cam here, folks). It contributes to an almost voyeuristic nature that the film harbors, in which you are attracted to something horrifying you are seeing with your own eyes, and cannot look away. Because of these long shots, the acting is often sustained over periods of several minutes, delivering what true and uninterrupted fear and shock may look like in this scenario. Action sometimes happens only intermittently; for example, scenes of extended quiet sobbing are ferociously punctuated by a gunshot or a threat, in a way that constantly demands the audience's attention. The cinematography, editing, and score are up to par with Vivas's vision, and rope everything together to create scenes of unbearable tension.

As far as home invasion films go, "Kidnapped" may be the most flawlessly produced film in its genre.

Unfortunately, I found the final fifteen minutes of the film to descend into a level of violence and absurdity that does not match with the rest of the film's style. The false ending and subsequent conclusion ended the film on a gimmicky platform that left a bad taste in my mouth. To explain fully, I would need to give away the ending -- but hopefully you'll see what I mean.

To the genre fan, the sloppy ending should not deter you from seeing "Kidnapped." This is an overall captivating movie, and should absolutely be on your radar.

A quick note -- seek out the Spanish-language version of this film. In order for the director's vision to shine through, you need the original dialogue. The English-version dub is awful and will take away from your viewing experience.

If you've ever had nightmares about a home invasion - here's where they get played out. A family moves into a new home. If you've ever moved you'll know there's something kind of creepy about the movers right away. They're too interested in exploring the house; they follow the family members around too often. They're suspicious. And they should be. That night, the family ends up being terrorized by a gang of violent thugs. What starts as a terrifying but still relatively simple robbery eventually descends into bloodshed, rape and murder as the father is forced to accompany one of the invaders into town to withdraw money from his bank account, while his wife and daughter are left at the house at the mercy of the others.

There's really no character development at all in this. The movie opens with an extremely disorienting scene of an obviously hooded, bound and kidnapped man escaping across a highway desperately looking for help, except that you figure out pretty quickly if you pay attention that this can't be the same man. The first impression given is that you're going to have a flashback movie explaining how the man came to be in this situation, but the only other explanation has to be that this guy and his family are are victims of the same gang. It's mildly disorienting at first, but it's also very obvious that whatever we're seeing at the movie's start isn't directly related to the home invasion that's portrayed. The story moves pretty quickly to the family who are the real focus of the movie. We learn little about them. They seem to be a typical father, mother and daughter. There's no particular reason for them to be targeted - which is probably the most frightening part of the movie. This sort of thing won't happen to very many people (thankfully) but when it does happen, it could literally happen to anyone.

The movie progresses (if that's the right word) from being frightening, to being violent, to being very bloody and graphic and in the end quite horrifying. It's well done. It's a Spanish movie. I watched the version dubbed into English - and even the dubbing was done fairly well. There's not really much to complain about, although I'm not sure that the scene at the beginning was really necessary. It disorients for a few minutes at most, but then it serves no real purpose. (8/10)

excerpt - How many times can a familiar plot be rehashed and remade before audiences tire of it? Formulaic retreads of stories we've seen a thousand times before clutter the cinema listings, and lack of originality is something we lament. With that in mind, Manuel Angel Vivas has charged himself with the task of breathing new life into the age-old idea of a family being held hostage in their own home. But does his conceptual staging and technical expertise make for a compelling picture or a triumph of style over substance?

Kidnapped is an easy film to admire, but a difficult one to like. All the gimmicks and trickery in the world can't disguise the fact that once the technical wizardry has been stripped away it is a pretty standard thriller. As an experience, it is unforgettable. Sadly, that experience as akin to being relentlessly bludgeoned. Hopefully, Vivas will return next time with a story which matches his undoubted skill.

This is a riveting watch with some of the most excruciating violence and savagery; Hollywood could never make anything even close resembling this as it is so close to the brutal truth of the violence that is so prevalent in the world today, it will leave the viewer with morbid thoughts well after the film has finished; days after even. As one reviewer has already said, i would never let my girlfriend watch this, its definitely not a film for women, the rape scene in particular is excruciating to watch and the acting is top notch making it so realistic it made me feel a bit queasy and that is not an easy thing for me!

The problem I have however , is that there is not enough characterization and the story is your basic run of the mill home invasion; although made with a brutal reality rarely seen these days and that is what I love about Spanish/Italian/French movie making scene, they do not sanitize anything and give us something that hollywood cannot!

The closest the UK comes to this kind of movie is something like Eden Lake in its depiction of real violence on the streets and what is really going on in the world today and having been a police officer myself it is very close to the truth and mirrors what I have seen personally. Too many of us now live in leafy suburbs miles away from the violence and trouble that is destroying the world and it is a good thing to watch a movie like this to bring home the truth of things sometimes, so its an above average 6/10 from me for its pure brutal authentic style but sadly without anything else I could not justify giving it any more than that!