THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When it comes to serious stakes, you never know if the worst or best parts of yourself will emerge until they are set. I understood that when it came to watching Prisoners.
PLOT
The film takes place in Pennsylvania and follows two neighborhood families whose lives drastically change on Thanksgiving. The Dover family includes Keller, his wife Grace, their teenage son Ralph (Dylan Minnette) and 6 year old daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich). The Birch family includes Franklin, his wife Nancy, their teenage daughter Eliza (Zoe Soul) and 7 year old daughter Joy (Kyla-Drew Simmons). The holiday gathering hosted by the Birches takes a turn when Anna & Joy go missing who went to the former's home hoping to find her whistle she lost. Ralph suggests the girls must have been taken by someone driving an RV because they tried playing on it when it was parked in the middle of the street. When neither family finds it, Keller calls the police for help. Detective Loki responds to a call about an RV matching the description and arrests its driver named Alex Jones. After hours of interrogation, Alex would be deemed unlikely of a suspect due to having a low IQ and the RV had no forensic evidence of the girls missing. He does share this to the Dover parents, which only angers Keller because it doesn't reach an answer on where the girls are. With Alex being on an 48 hour hold, Loki would run down leads on local pedophiles until finding a corpse in the basement of a convicted priest; He admitted to have killed after confessing of murdering 16 children as an act of war on God. The hold on Alex would expire and allow him to go home with his only guardian, his aunt Holly. The moment he's let go, Keller confronts him again and demands to know where the girls are. Just before Loki pulls him away, he only replies they didn't cry until he left them. He shares this to the detective but with no one else to have heard him, he chooses to not believe him and hold him longer. Feeling like there's no other choice left to find the children, he chooses to abduct Alex and torture him until he gives him the information he seeks. He is able to hide him in an empty building he owns. He first tells Franklin of what he's done and gets him to take part of the torture. When the latter ends up telling Nancy, both agree to not free Alex nor tell the police of what he's doing. During a vigil for the girls, Loki would approach a man suspicious and would chase him until he flees, resulting in him to release a sketch of him to the community. When that same suspect sneaks into the houses of the Birches and Dovers, Grace would hear him and call in the detective, mistaking it to be Anna. When she shows him the basement, he realizes Keller has been away from home during the investigation. He then tracks him down to the empty building, but the Dover patriarch covers his tracks by claiming he's been staying there to drink. The detective searches around the building but doesn't find Alex due to being trapped in a boarded bathroom where Keller can torture him with a rigged water heater. He does track down his second suspect from the vigil, named Bob Taylor, and finds his home walls covered in maze drawings, as well as find crates filled with snakes & bloody children's clothes. When showing pictures of the clothes to Keller and the Birches, they confirm some of them to belong to their children. During interrogation, Loki would assault Bob to demand the location of the girls, but it doesn't work out when he takes an officer's gun to shoot himself. With Keller choosing to continue torture Alex, the hostage speaks in riddles that his name isn't even Alex and the girls need to escape a maze. Out of guilt, he visits his aunt Holly to understand Alex's predicament. She ends up sharing she and her husband lost faith after their son died of cancer and chose to cope by adopting Alex, whose stuttering originates from an accident involving snakes. As the investigation continues on Loki's end, he finds out Bob is not a suspect because all the clothes have been store bought and the soaked blood comes from a pig, meaning that he recreates the assumed killings. He confirms this to be true when scouting the Dovers' home and find one of Anna's socks and footprints matching Taylor's. Joy would be thankfully found and taken into a local hospital. When both families check in on her, Keller and Grace can't help themselves and wonder what happened Anna. Still woozy after being found drugged, the only statement she gives is that she saw in the house she held in before she escaped. Keller quickly deduces the house to be Holly's as it was the only other place he recently visited apart from his home and the building he owns. He would rush out of there to confront her, but Loki would try to follow him. He doesn't find Keller at the building as he expected, but does find Alex and calls it in. Just as Keller confronts Holly, she would confess to have taken the kids herself and used to do it with her husband before he disappeared. Alex was the first of their victims and Bob was the second, but the former lair no harm on the girls and only took them on a joyride beige they were taken. Holly then handcuffs him, shoots his leg and forces him to drink handmade LSD-ketamine before trapping him in a hidden pit in his yard. As he is stuck there, he finds the whistle Anna was looking for. Loki would be assigned to go to Holly and inform him Alex has been found. When he enters her home, he would find a picture of her dead husband wearing the same maze necklace found in the corpse from the priest’s home. Realizing Holly is the one responsible for the kidnappings, he finds her in other room drugging Anna and holds her at gunpoint, demanding her to surrender. She would respond by shooting at the detective. Despite being grazed, he would shoot her down and take the girl to the hospital to recover. The following day, Grace would thank him for finding her daughter. After finding out what Keller did to Alex, who ended up returning to his biological mother he was separated from, Grace believes he did the right thing doing whatever it took to find their daughter, despite the consequence of being arrested found. Days later, Loki would wander the crime scene of Holly's house in hopes to find Keller. Just as the evidence technicians leave and wrap up for the night due to the ground in the are being frozen solid, the film would end in a cliffhanger as the detective hears the whistle from the pit hidden under a car.
THOUGHTS
As I was transitioning from middle to high school in 2013, my taste for film was changing. I was looking for films that were exciting in the most unexpected ways possible. Even when I that was exactly what I wanted, I couldn’t believe how high expectations would be exceeded by the time the credits had rolled for this one. Director Denis Villeneuve and writer Aaron Guzikowski made what felt like the thrill of a lifetime for with making step of the journey, every chapter of the story absolute incredible to get through. Whether or not you’re able to put the pieces together, you’re still hooked with every set of execution. Roger Deakins’ cinematography and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s are all great with their foreboding atmosphere because you know something is wrong and you keep on wondering how the dread will go away. The true reason one can get hooked from beginning to end is due to how it explores the importance of how our morals will be tested at our lowest and our actions will show us how monstrous we are deep down. This theme is magnificently explored thanks to an ensemble that shows every level of will put to an unconventional test. It was a great twist on making Holly the true threat because it’s a fine example how you’ll never know people’s true intentions until it’s too late. Melissa Leo have a fantastic two faced performance on making her appear gentle when was really diabolical due to her loss emotionally corrupting her. Her goal to pass on the trauma of loss to other families by kidnapping children may have been a war on god in their eyes, but was really a selfish way to say no one else should have healthy children if she couldn’t. It was a relief that she would be stopped, but it sadly didn’t undo the damage she had already done. There were so many layers to Paul Dano’s Alex and David Dastmalchian’s Bob gave so many layers to their performances as well, being more great examples there was more than what met the eye. Dastmalchian has us second guess he was perverted but was living off of recreated trauma due to not being able to get over his own. Hai death was so tough to accept by the end because you wish he had the appropriate help to not be in the mental state he was. Dano showed Alex as one who was living off of fear because he wasn’t sure how to overcome his own oppressor. He was thought to have been the perpetrator from the appearance alone, but was sadly a victim as well in more than one way. It was gladdening for him to have his own happy ending, but you just wish he didn’t have to go through so much pain to get there. That was possible because one’s will was tested the most to the point where we weren’t sure to be root for or against. Hugh Jackman gives a breathtaking performance for making Keller a loving family man who thought to have been prepared for the worst until his daughter was taken from him. You want to respect his good intentions because he doesn’t deserve to lose his daughter, but his actions he made towards Alex within a week only made him look just as bad as the true perpetrator. What he did was so vile, we would become frightened of him because his will was at the brink of being broken. It was still intact because he never took the life of the one he held captive. You feel bad for him by the end of his arc because he wasn’t able to reunite with Anna by the time he figured out the truth. What was very surprising though was that his inner circle was not against him. Maria Bello was definitely impressive in her own right in showing Grace to have lose all her joy and become drained of her emotions due to the sudden turn of events. You definitely felt bad for her when she thought to have heard Anna in the home because that was how much she missed her. She never questioned what her husband was doing during the investigation because she trusted him to succeed in finding their daughter. She was just as surprised as everyone else was when it came to finding out what he did, but she chose to respect it because she knew he was making an effort son one else would make. She’ll accept he’ll go through consequences but will always appreciate what he felt he had to do. Terrence Howard & Viola Davis were a great pair as Franklin & Nancy because they both loved their children and believed they’ll do whatever it took to get Joy back, but accepted their limits when it came to knowing what Keller was doing. They don’t report him to the police because they didn’t want to make things worse for each other. They chose to let him go on with it as long as he did until he reached his own limit, which is exactly what happened. It worked out for them in the long run because they still got Joy back and the truth of their friend came out with them interfering. With Keller acting to the brink of irrational, it’s a relief to have an actual protagonist whose will and morals were well intact throughout. Jake Gyllenhaal had us admire Detective Loki through such an intense performance of his own. The man was focused on saving the girls and wanting to give hope to those who needed it. He’s so passionate in his line of work because he has to and wants to equally. He’s being the guardian angel he didn’t have in his life. This is not the first missing children case but if he never took it serious, no one else would and he knew that. Thankfully, he does get to continue being the said angel when it came to saving Anna, but the true question is if he ever does for Keller once we cut to black. It does seem he was when it came to trying to gain his trust during the investigation, but the question really matters on whether or not he saved him. I am sure he did as Guzikowski claims because for a man so smart throughout, it would be insane for him to not know where the whistle was coming from. If he really did, I hope he paves a way for Keller to gain redemption for his actions. Now I’m serious when I say I love this movie very much, but there are still a couple of things I question more than the ending. Now it ain’t the girls’ fault for wandering around without their older siblings because they don’t know better, but the teens should’ve brought up the RV way before dinner. Had they done that, the parents would’ve told the teens to chaperone the kids to the other house. Keller is a smart guy for the most part, but he makes more mistakes that are just as noticeable as the unforgivable. He may have not expected Loki to visit the basement, but he should’ve put the lye back where it was. And if he wanted to keep his tracks covered from Loki, he should’ve not ran out of the building no matter how sure he was of the truth. On top of that, he should’ve just knee capped Holly to make her tell him where Anna was considering what he already done to Alex. Other than that, this movie remains an incredible experience. In conclusion, Prisoners is one of 2013’s finest films for pushing the boundaries on what a thriller should be. If thrillers are up your alley, see this now.
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