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Movie Review: Captivity Exploits Dark Side of Human Invention

By Katherine Ramsland

July 17, 2007

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Ever since the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie series, we've seen plenty of movies of serial killers who kidnap people for torture. They're easy to dismiss as mere fiction because the psychology that motivates such cinematic killers is generally contrived. With Captivity, from director Rolland Joffé (The Killing Fields), we get to consider this dilemma once more, but this time it's from the perspective of a lone woman. That puts it at least a little closer to the reports we've heard from victims who've actually been held captive as sex slaves.

Internationally-renowned fashion model Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) is kidnapped one night from a club. She awakens to captivity in a small cell and soon learns that she must endure a succession of psychological tortures that grows more physical, and the scenes are often explicit. Readers get to watch her become encased in sand — torment for anyone with claustrophobia — and drink a particularly gruesome concoction, as well as get dramatically stymied in every attempt to escape.

Gary Heidnik being led to court
Gary Heidnik being led to court

The situation is reminiscent of scenes involving the serial killer Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, who was partially based on Gary Heidnik, a serial killer who held female prisoners in the basement of his house in Philadelphia. One woman had died from hanging in chains and he killed another with electrical torture. Heidnik had used them as sex slaves and was planning to add more. When police raided his house in 1987, they found three women in chains, suffering from abuse and malnutrition. After Heidnik's arrest, he admitted to eating pieces from one victim and feeding some to his captives.

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   By Katherine Ramsland

 

Katherine Ramsland

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