This film is a lower budget endeavor and that's obvious from the start, therefore I wasn't really expecting to be excited or enticed to say it was a fantastical experience. I wasn't even going to leave a review but seeing that the only people who got on here to bother doing so were the whiny people who demand that everything be a Hollywood blockbuster, it seemed appropriate. It's obvious that van der Beek and Burton thought it was an important enough story to lend their well-known names to.
Because of this film, a lot of people were armed with information about what to do in a similar situation. I thought the acting was fine and in particular I thought van der Beek was a good choice to show that monsters don't necessarily look like monsters. This film isn't going to knock your socks off in the entertainment sense, but it is a harrowing account of what a teenage girl went through and, more importantly, lived through.
It's easy to criticize if you're coming from a place that expects a film to be written and directed as fiction, but critiquing what was said or done by the characters of a biographical drama seems a bit nonsensical.
My surprise was in seeing how Anne was so dominating and arrogant in the face of such a threat. But I can definitely understand that it takes a strong person to be that brave and that intelligent in such a situation. That's not to say that those who didn't survive a similar situation we're not brave or intelligent.
Sure there's things to criticize here because of the low budget and the short runtime. In particular I didn't like the song in the beginning of the film and I sarcastically thought to myself, well the kidnapping ended that torture. But the actors all did an acceptable job of reenacting a real life drama.
If this film doesn't make you feel emotional about the victims of people who kidnapp and abuse our young people, then you might want to go see the wizard about a heart.
