JACKMAN. Throbbing bundle of nerves and raw emotions.
Cinematic chillers and thrillers pledge to scare the living daylights out of viewers, who pay good money to experience the cathartic, cleansing rush of pure terror that results from those fictive encounters with danger, death—or the undead!
However, only a few productions live up to their pious or impious promise, while most others fall flat and betray their phlegmatic limitations—and the awkward and over-obvious “smoke and mirrors” ploys by which they try to terrorize their viewer-victims.
So many thrillers fail at the attempt that we’ve become much more selective and cautious about exposing ourselves to a new scarefest.
—Well, the extra caution has paid off, because the latest whodunit we’ve viewed, “Prisoners,” delivers the thrilling, chilling goods, as promised.
It does so by making its storytelling revolve around the kidnapping and possibly serial killing of two little girls. The fact that the abductees are so young and helpless adds heaps to the empathetic pain and fear we feel for them, and for their anguished parents.
One of the girls’ fathers is played by Hugh Jackman, who is a throbbing bundle of nerves and raw emotions from start to finish, as are the other adults involved in the frantic search for the missing girls.
Complex case
They include a highly determined and fiercely motivated investigator (Jake Gyllenhaal) who swears that he’s going to solve the complex case even if it kills him—which it almost does!
The case is extremely difficult to solve because the abductor has left absolutely no clues—it’s as if the girls have simply, completely vanished into thin air, never to be seen or heard from again!
Indeed, as he launches into his investigation, Gyllenhaal discovers that other kids in the same town vanished decades ago, and their cases were never solved.
So, he redoubles his investigative efforts and uses his extraordinary powers of deduction to try to make some sense out of the leads that eventually emerge—even if they often contradict one another.
They involve a frustratingly confusing cast of characters, including a retarded boy-man, some sex offenders, a drunken, defrocked priest and the mysterious man he’s killed, etc.—!
What is going on here? The answers are so elusive that Jackman’s character takes things into his own hands, and tries to force one of the prime suspects to spill the beans and expose his coabductors—while the girls are still alive!
This “time-running-out” scenario is what amps up the film’s bone-chilling “fear factor” to occasionally unbearable levels. Even when a scene looks low-key and “ordinary,” we fear for those unseen girls’ lives, and the “empathetic torment” is extreme.
Scare tactics
Aside from its psychological and cinematic scare tactics, “Prisoners” also scores thematic points that make us ponder its events’ deeper significance.
For one thing, it turns out that the film’s title refers, not just to the young abductees, but also to its adult characters, both vile and virtuous alike—because they are all “imprisoned” by their varying fears, drives and torments.
In addition, the inclusion of a priest in the cast of characters adds a spiritual level to the charged proceedings, which makes us think about the perceived presence or absence of God or morality in our lives. —Especially when pedophiles and serial killers threaten the safety and even the lives of those we hold most dear—and are determined to protect with every loving fiber of our being!