I've noticed that a lot of recent Spanish genre films feature extremely long takes, something that Guillermo Del Toro and filmmakers behind [REC] both use very well. Of course, a long, slow burn has been a horror staple since the days of Universal and Hammer, but a lack of rapid fire edits feel particularly dissonant to an increasing ADD Michael Bayized generation. Strangely, the trend towards unflinching takes has largely ignored the horror potential of actual reality, something that director Miguel Angel Vivas seems well aware in this movie.
I wasn’t counting, but I’d be surprised to learn if there were more than 15 cuts in this 80 minute endurance test of a movie. “Kidnapped” (or as the subtitles reveal its original title “Hostages”) doesn’t stray far from the formula one has come to expect of such films, save for a jarring opening sequence that shows the aftermath for the previous victim. There are three thieves, dressed in black, and a family of three, whose only conflict appears to be that their daughter Isa wants to go out with her boyfriend. She is halfway out the door when the burglars burst through a glass window on the side of the house and proceed to tie up the women and dispatch one man to take the father, Jaime out to collect money from various ATMs.
Whereas most filmmakers would derive their tension from the unknown, Vivas often divides the screen into two as Jaime drives around the city to empty out his bank accounts and Isa and her mother Marta are tortured by the other two thieves. One can see the fear and desperation in Jaime’s eyes as he suspects the worst and Vivas simultaneously shows the audiences in real time what is actually happening to Jaime’s wife and daughter. The split-screen is really the only concession Vivas seems willing to make to break the reality he’s constructed, there's no humor or throwaway moments for an audience member to breathe. Sometimes the camera is trained on the floor or a shelf as conversations go on in the background, but for the most part in “Kidnapped,” the tension keeps rising to higher and higher levels.
Ironically, you don’t notice what “Kidnapped” is missing until well after it’s over – the characters, bad and good, all radiate intelligence and don't make any typical "why are they doing that?" blunders that lesser films are guilty of (I'm talking to you, Strangers). This masks the fact that the characters are fairly stock and people we’ve seen many times before. Also, the film is based in real time, but doesn’t work against a ticking clock, and up until the climax, the violence is inflicted psychologically rather than physically.
Although I was disappointed in the film’s ending and I'm not sure why. For one, it definitely doesn't betray the spirit and themes of what came before. “Kidnapped” is such a display of intense, downright muscular filmmaking that its shortcomings in the stock character department completely cede to its impressiveness as a lean, mean, thrill machine.
P.S. This one is unrated for a reason. I'm a pretty stoic watcher of film, but there's a particular scene that really made me go eeesh!
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