The Abduction of Zack Butterfield

Beautifully rendered depiction of psychology of interrelationship that can develop between captor and captured...Using older woman - younger boy to illustrate how this can occur. A too frequent scenario, usually passed by, here examined with depth, clarity and sensitivity. The relationships most frequently used to illustrate this are between older men and younger women, or between persons of the same sex. Iraq was the first war in which we sent women into combat. Post traumatic stress disorder is expressed in many ways. Using this disorder, the writer and director have detailed the development of this relationship with such finesse that the viewer is alternately thrown from compassion to revulsion to sorrow. If you have it within you, you will come away with greater depth of feeling and understanding about this condition. The cinematography by Aric Jacobson is exquisite. (I shot the set stills for this film.)

I waited a long time for this to become available on DVD. It's an interesting idea for a movie and the trailer made it look like it could be a credible film, but it is close to bottom-of-the-barrel film making. Barely a notch above homemade YouTube video productions. For such a prurient plot line there is nothing in this movie that would make a nun blush. The most memorable sex scene involves them jumping on the bed as the camera moves away and points to the floor as the couple's articles of clothing are thrown there into a pile while music from Swan Lake is played. Swan Lake! It was like a parody of a bad lovemaking scene! The boy is appealing enough in the lead but every other performance in the movie seems amateurish. The young woman is nowhere near credible as a skilled and dangerous war veteran. And it ends abruptly with several captions to explain what happened after, which were both inane and unsatisfying. Somebody had an provocative idea for a movie, but no ability to deliver one.

As a woman (and a feminist,) I find the Abduction of Zach Butterfield a brave attempt at exposing the taboo subject of a woman as sexual predator. This topic was dealt with unflinchingly in this audacious effort by an obviously neophyte director. The actors did a great job at portraying their characters and the cinematographer did an excellent job of framing the beauty of the Hudson Valley.

Brett Helsham did an amazing job of portraying the bi-polar and PTSD haunted personality of the protagonist, April. TJ Plunkett as Zack was superb. But I related most to the heart-wrenching scenes of Lisa Gunn as the bewildered mother waiting for her son to return home.

This is a very emotional and dramatic film; I immediately hated April and loved Zack. The bathroom scene was my favorite. It was exciting to watch Zack plot his escape. I'll have to watch this thriller at least five more times for a proper critique.

Now and then along comes a new film by a young director who co-wrote a story and brings it to life with a degree of freshness that makes us look forward to further works from his hands. Such is the case for Rick Lancaster whose little film THE ABDUCTION OF ZACK BUTTERFIELD deserves attention. Rick comes to this project well prepared: he attended Harvard, Yale, NYU (Drama) and Cornell University where he graduated with honors with two Bachelors Degrees, and went on to earn a Masters Degree. Rick then attended Film Editors school in New York City, learned the craft and became a member of the Film Editors Union. Catching the bug for directing he found a friendly mentor (and producer) in Stephen Ryder, the CEO of Metropolis Films, whose skills in writing are well known (the highly honored and populate L.I.E.) and together these two men wrote the screenplay and gathered a young cast of very fine talent and out came THE ABDUCTION OF ZACK BUTTERFIELD.

The story takes chances and that is why it works so well. A polished high school 14-year-old athlete (martial arts) and fine student – Zach (beautifully underplayed by TJ Plunkett) is not one to go along with his in-crowd macho classmates but has a fine and healthy relationship with his parents (Lisa Gunn and Aaron Letrick) and girlfriend Emily (Celine du Tertre). Out on a jog Zack is abducted by the beautiful April (Brett Helsham) who happens to be an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran with a creepy dysfunctional family history. April cuffs Zack, tacks him to a hidden cottage in the back country, and places a necklace loaded with malleable explosive beads, and begins what appears to be a BDSM relationship. Gradually both April and Zack find aspects of their own needs fulfilled by the other and have a deepening if bizarre relationship. At home Zack's parents continue to watch for Zack's return and the local sheriff (played with unusual skill by Stephen Ryder) and FBI agents try to find him. An incident changes the plot after three months have passed - a young lad finds the cabin when seeking for assistance with his stalled car, sees Zack through the window, April notices and ends the lad's interference. Zack now realizes the full extent of April's war and childhood damaged psyche and the film ends with a surprise.

The story is told with restraint, due no doubt to Rick Lancaster's sensitive direction, and there are many subtle inferences about the manner in which we are living at present that give the story significant substance. This is a strong film from a committed company and crew top to bottom and deserves a wider theatrical release.

I have never felt so compelled to tell people to stay away from a film, a filmmaker and actors more than this film, this filmmaker and these actors. (so much so that I actually signed up for an IMDb account!)

Not only are they wasting any audience's time. But you can feel the absolute waste of time they all must have experienced. After all, I only lost about an hour and a half of my time. A loss I deeply regret, but I can only imagine that the writers, producers, director and actors have lost much more time and have done irreparable damage to their reputations. The only good thing I can say is that actor playing Agent Quincannon reminds me of 70's porn actor Scott Noll, unfortunately he seems to come from the same deer in the headlights school of acting porn actors do.

The sad thing is that the set up, the idea behind the film is not half bad. It's a little like Hard Candy meets L.I.E. (which this "screenwriter/producer" also created. He seems to be plagiarizing himself and doing some self-therapy all at once.)

The execution however is so laughably amateurish that at every aspect from beginning to end you are slack-jawed at how anyone involved in the production didn't just walk away. That the actors had to deliver such leaden lines is one thing, but if you are gonna have such a terrible script then at least the producers should have insisted in casting better actors. Or perhaps this was a case of producers scraping the bottom of the barrel as no self-respecting actor would ever take on a role if they actually bothered to read the script.

Did I watch the entire thing? Yes,I unfortunately did. Did I feel my time was wasted, no doubt. So why didn't I walk away? Because I expected at least something to happen to elevate it to camp status. That moment unfortunately never came, which leads me to believe everyone involved actually thought they were making something good.