Kidnapped (2010)

Waste of time

That was an excellent one.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I love a good home invasion horror film. There's something compelling about watching innocent people trying to survive an attack on their home. I even love the film's most people don't give a toss about like, Darren Lynn Bousman's Mother's Day remake. Kidnapped is a home invasion film in the purest sense of the word. It completely strips the whole idea to its bare basics and offers nothing new to the subgenre. However, what it lacks in originality it makes up for in its impressive execution, acting and intense atmosphere.The opening to the film is one of the most uncomfortable moments. It follows a bloodied man waking up in the middle of nowhere with a plastic bag tied around his head. He stumbles around a foresty area, struggling to breathe with the bag suffocating him. Watching this made me almost feel as if I was being smothered! The cause of this effect is that it's filmed entirely in one long take.In fact, you might be surprised to find out after watching that the entire 80 minute film consists of just 12 takes. This is even less than Michael Haneke's shots in Funny Games! These long takes create a chillingly realistic atmosphere. The shots aren't static either, there's always some claustrophobic sense of movement as the camera follows characters around the house. It's a technical marvel! I loved the sequence which showed the family moving into their new posh house. There's some very clichéd dialogue between the mother and teenage daughter about the Mum not letting the daughter go out tonight and the Dad not caring. It's not imaginative in the slightest, but the fluid camera-work makes it interesting. Once the intruders burst in, it's jarring and the intensity rises.It doesn't add any new ideas, but thanks to the amazing camera-work and acting it places Kidnapped a cut above the other home invasion movies. I was particularly impressed with the girl's performance. I expect most people will find her hysteria irritating, but it felt so real and justified. Usually in these types of film, character behaviour is unrealistic or contrived in order to aid with the film's plot. Everything here is shown in a very realistic way. Put that together with the super-long takes and you've got something that feels more like a snuff film than anything else. To normal people this isn't entertainment, but horror fiends will find it arresting. The use of split-screen also succeeded well in building tension and creating claustrophobia.Kidnapped might not have the same innovation as say, You're Next but it is an exceptionally well-made film. I was gripped throughout and impressed by the shocking ending which pulls the rug from under your feet. I would've liked it to have been longer and to create a few more original ideas for itself, but it's the directing which is its saving grace. It becomes more like an experience. In a sense Kidnapped is like a non-judgmental version of Funny Games. Whereas, Funny Games criticises you for watching it, Kidnapped is more concerned with giving its audience a slice of intense real life. Hollywood should just leave horror to the foreigners.

"Take your last breath!" (this film's tagline) is right! Secuestrados is a film guaranteed to leave with you the suffocating taste of the bitter ash of defeat.Things start out normal in Madrid as a family, (Jaime, Marta, and their daughter Isa), begin the moving process into a new, perfect home. There are telemarketers calling, problems with the gas company, "this goes here, that goes there" dialogue. All this, plus some mother-daughter arguing is served atop the mundane white noise of the shuffling moving crew, charged with the task of bringing the old into the new.Much in the style of the movers, Miguel Angel Vivas manages to update a classic scenario of home invasion without pandering. From the first startling moment of disruption to the last gnarled turn of fate, we see a stark realness and urgency that offers up not only what is baser and visceral for the characters, but also a glimpse at how they think, and ultimately, how they are disappointed.

This movie was quite depressing and the family doesn't fight back....The family does everything they say even what they do to the daughter is just disgusting. I think this movie was just horrible. The family gets abused left and right and don't fight back The movie doesn't express the reason they family so called "fights back" is because after the abuse they took they were all going to die anyway so they do what they had to in the end because they lost their minds after the abuse and rape they took. They had the entire movie to fight back yet nothing happened for the whole movie but screaming and yelling and crying and getting abused. The last 15 mins of the movie the family gets tired of being abused and lose their mind because they had too. I felt the only thing relatable in this movie was feeling so horribly sad for the family because we would never want to go through what these people are going through. What a terrible movie, this is only my opinion, but I just couldn't watch this movie ever again. I felt like this whole movie was horrible unless you like these movies of watching families get brutalized and tortured and robbed and raped than please be my guest. Nothing in this whole movie showed fighting back these people in this movie if this was real would all be dead.

This is by far the most annoying junk I have ever seen. Don't believe a word about the plot and violence being authentic. There's nothing authentic here, from the beginning where the mother-daughter squabbling, to the unconvincing victims' behaviors (every single one of them find every opportunity to agitate the kidnappers, where you'd think they should be scared out of their wits and being docile). The kidnappers are what you can see in "Dumbest Criminals".Five minutes after the kidnap starts, I wanted to grab a gun and silence the entire family of three to stop their very, very annoying, non-stopping babbling/whimpering/screaming.Now while I'm typing this, I really wanted to find out the director/producer's emails and send them hate emails. Oh, BTW, Netflix should just remove this junk to save some storage space. Shish...