Pray For the Best, Prepare For the Worst

This is one saying that's stated a few times throughout Denis Villeneuve's kidnapping thriller, Prisoners.  The first part of that sentence is easier than the second, seeing as nothing can prepare a parent for the event of a child being taken.  These are also two things that the audience is encouraged to do while watching the film.

Child abduction is one of the most frightening aspects of society, and it can be equally as unsettling in film.  Just like in real life, narratives involving kidnapping can take the story and its characters beyond simply looking for the victim, and deliver them to grim and hellish places, both externally and internally, that those involved didn't have any idea existed.

In more recent films involving kidnapping, Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, unfortunately, diluted the tension of the story with overblown visuals, but Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone handled its child abduction story stunningly.

In Villeneuve's film, there are constant, tension-filled shifts between the police's hard-boiled efforts to find the missing children and the ethical dilemmas faced by the parents as they find their own ways to seek justice.  What starts out as a normal family gathering turns into a cinematic puzzle of crime.

On a Thanksgiving afternoon, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), his wife Grace (Maria Bello), and their son and younger daughter spend the day at the home of their friends, Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis), along with their two children.  When six-old-year daughters Anna Dover and Joy Birch go missing, the parents seek the help of Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) to begin a frantic search.

When the police don't get the results that Keller hopes for, he takes the investigation into his own hands and takes main suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano) captive in order to force answers out of him.  This all unfolds in a disturbing mystery that goes deeper than anyone could have anticipated.

Hugh Jackman gives a career-best performance as a father who will go to dark lengths to get his child back.  He's an actor who can bring an immense power to a film whenever he's on screen, and the fatherly determination of his character is the catalyst for the audience to ask themselves what they would do in this unthinkable and frighteningly plausible scenario.

 His morally-questionable actions can cause stirring debates because Keller's actions encourage the audience to ponder if he's justified in his actions, despite how horrifying the situation is.  Jackman portrays his character as someone who truly believes that he's right in what he's doing, hardly ever expressing any doubt or indecision as he locks up and tortures Alex, leaving the audience to wonder if he has any conscious or sense of humanity during this trying time.

Although Jake Gyllenhaal has a youthful appearance, he plays his character as a detective who has much confidence in his profession.  He is an individual of a calm and reassuring stance when providing comfort for the two families, but is a very different person when interrogating the suspects.

The first time we meet him is when he's having dinner alone at a Chinese restaurant on Thanksgiving.  He is essentially a loner in most of his work on this case, going along without much help from any other cop, and the socially-introverted personality that Gyllenhaal gives the character compliments it.  Despite that, it's clear he has the seasoned, interrogation-room ruggedness that's needed to solve the case at hand.

Paul Dano is another character in the film who causes the audience to be split on how it views him.  He has the appearance and withdrawn personality of someone who looks as though he is hiding something heinous, but the way he's victimized by Keller without any substantial evidence of being a kidnapper creates some doubt to him being guilty. 

The screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski carefully doles out its clues to keep the audience invested, without giving too much away at once.  As more clues are revealed, it's easy for the audience to give itself over to the film and try to piece everything together with each plot revelation.

The two-and-a-half-hour length of the story allows for the mystery to grip the viewer slowly in its barbed vice until it becomes tight enough that the viewer becomes as obsessed with solving the crime as Detective Loki, and if the viewer thinks that the character motivations make for stimulating talking points, then the ending will ignite discussions in the minutes following the film's cut-to-black.

One of the best parts of the story comes from Detective Loki being more reasonable in his actions and Keller being the opposite in his ferocity, and this is a genius aspect of the film because it looks as though the two are engaged in a good-cop-bad-cop routine that neither realizes they are playing.

The way the characters are written, particularly Keller and Alex, has the audience question if Keller is justified in his actions and if Alex is truly an abductor, or if Alex is innocent and Keller has become an abductor himself by holding the suspect against his will.

Director Villeneuve explores people's dark intentions that they don't even realize are there until they are called upon.  Although Jackman and Gyllenhaal are the two at the center of the story, Villeneuve still gets terrific and memorable performances out of his entire cast.  With the characters who are involved in the scenes with Alex being held captive, especially Keller, the film begs the question: When trying to save your child, do morals matter?

The mood that Villeneuve creates with the technical aspects of the film reinforces the dark nature of the protagonists as they try to take action into their own hands.  With the bleak coloring of Roger A. Deakins' cinematography, the effective lack of lighting in certain scenes, and the gloomy and rainy atmosphere, there is a sense of danger and hopelessness that makes it almost feel as though the viewer is watching a David Fincher film, particularly The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zodiac and Seven.

Despite Prisoners dealing with situations that are nightmarish to even think about, it's a grimly gripping film mystery that any adult moviegoer should get involved in.

Final grade: A 

Animal House

It seems that the subject of home invasion has become this year's trend in horror movies.  Earlier this summer, there was The Purge, which focused on a one-night-a-year free-for-all where people could murder each other without consequence.  Now, the end of the season has brought the ominously titled You're Next.

Home invasion is one of the scarier topics of terror because of its frightening plausibility.  Directed by Adam Wingard, the film isn't as tightly tense as it should be, but it holds a few treats that make it worth watching more than most films of the horror genre in the last few years.

Erin (Sharni Vinson) is invited by her boyfriend, Crispian (A.J. Bowen), to spend some time with his well-to-do family at their secluded vacation home.  This includes his parents, two brothers and their girlfriends, and his sister and her boyfriend.  In the middle of their dinner one night, a group of three animal-mask-wearing intruders suddenly and viciously attack.  As the family attempts to do everything they can to survive the night, it turns out that one of them possesses the required skills to fight back.

Sharni Vinson, with the methods she uses to combat the assailants, has her character of Erin deserving to fall in the realm of tough horror movie heroes, such as Sidney Prescott of Scream, Nancy Thompson of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Laurie Strode of Halloween.  In this case, however, Erin could even be considered as a Horror Movie Protagonist 2.0 with how she handles herself in the film's deadly situations.  Erin is a strong individual who is positively fearless in the way she takes charge, and is a tremendously competent fighter.

She is also rather creative in her ways of taking down the killers, particularly in one scene where she finds a rather grisly way to use a blender as a tool for bloodshed, and she even takes down one attacker in a fashion similar to what James Stewart does to Raymond Burr in Rear Window.  Some of the traps she sets also bring forth a bloody Home Alone vibe.

The screenplay by Simon Barrett presents a clever touch of how even the most well-off families have their share of problems.  What gives this aspect a comical punch is when Erin tells Crispian how lucky he is to come from a good family, only to have the dinner table erupt into an argument the first night they all have dinner together.  Some of the film's best dark humor comes from the twist.  Not to give anything away, but it goes back to the theme of family dysfunction that is shown in the dinner scene, and amps it up considerably.  There's even a good dose of biting irony at the film's closing.

Although the dark wit helps to keep the movie afloat, there isn't much tension throughout.  There are some decent moments of dread in the first half, but once the twist reveals the killers' identities at the middle mark, much of the film afterwards becomes fairly predictable, including the killers' motives, which are revealed later on.

Director Wingard maintains the darkly humorous tone throughout the movie, even though the film's second half isn't quite as fun as the first.  His use of wit in a slasher-movie backdrop is reminiscent of what Wes Craven did for his Scream films.  If Wingard can integrate the smarts in any possible future horror-movie projects as he does with You're Next, he can be one of the next directors to watch out for in this genre.

Final grade: B