Horas de Medo

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.

Just when you thought that this types of movies (that Kidnapped is a part of), might have run dry, fresh blood comes and makes things interesting again (no pun intended). I'm not the biggest fan of those movies since an Austrian took the "Funny" (Games) out of it. But this Spanish effort has a lot going for it.

I liked the actors, I liked the fact that it "went places", that made it different. And while I didn't think it was perfect, the tension it builds (with simple premises) and the fact, that it stays as real as possible (but is still very violent) all build up to an exciting climax. Though I guess that might also be called one of its weakest points, by those who didn't like the movie

Three hooded Eastern-European criminals burst into a home in a Madrid gated community, holding the family hostage in its own home, and forcing the father to empty his credit cards.

The opening scene is creepy and disturbing, with visuals somehow reminiscent of "Timecrimes". While the two films are worlds apart, this just sets the tone for how disturbing everything will be. And "disturbing" is the operative word, as home invasion is the most disturbing horror subgenre because of its realism.

A successful home invasion film feels real, feels like something that could really happen to any of us at any time. It is not a killer in the woods or an alien, but real criminals that can beat, kill or rape us on a whim. Such situations are rare (thankfully), but all too possible. This is, by the way, a successful one, right up there with the best (such as "Funny Games").

The biggest complaint is that there is some poor dubbing at times, especially on the daughter. But if the film is watched in Spanish with subtitles, such a nuisance can be avoided.

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)

Jaime (Fernando Cayo), his wife Marta (Ana Wagener) and their teenage daughter Isa (Manuela Vellés) move to a dream house in Madrid and they plan a family dinner to celebrate. Out of the blue, three violent hooded thieves break in their house and hold the Marta and Isa hostage while their leader goes to the bank with Jaime to withdraw money from the family bank accounts in a tragic night of terror.

"Secuestrados" is a brutal and bleak film that combines the storyline of the 1955 "The Desperate Hours" with the disturbing violence of the 1997 "Funny Games". This film is recommended only to very specific audiences, defense lawyers and judges, since sensitive persons or someone who has experienced similar home invasion will certainly feel very bad with the graphic violence of "Secuestrados". Unfortunately we see many similar cases in the news on television every day. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Horas de Medo" ("Freightening Hours")