A24 film no. 15: The Captive (2014)
Atom Egoyan's The Captive is a slow, cold, and deeply upsetting meditation on child abduction and the wounds it leaves behind, not just on the people closest to the victim, but on the fabric of everything around them. It is not a perfect film (its structure is genuinely disorienting in ways that work against it at times), but it is one that, once you have spent some time with it, reveals itself to be more thoughtful than its surface might suggest. The story follows several interlocking threads: Cassandra (Peyton Kennedy and Alexia Fast, playing her younger and older self), a young girl abducted from her father's truck and held captive by a man who is one of the leaders of a pedophile network; her father Matthew (Ryan Reynolds), consumed by guilt and grief in his search for her; two detectives (Scott Speedman and Rosario Dawson) trying to dismantle the network operating in the area; and Cassandra's mother, quietly being tortured at her cleaning job by objects left for her ...
