The Tortured

At the first 25 minutes the movie try desperately, with a series of crude flashbacks, to convince the audience of something the actors themselves could not: To believe that they are suffering for the lost of their child. And even that isn't enough to make believable an apple-pie family turning the new Hewitts. An unbelievably long hour later the film was over with a very confusing but mildly interesting 5 minutes ending. One moment you are wondering "how that will turn out?", the other, roll credits. Through out the whole movie, flashbacks continue to appear over and over and over again showing nothing relevant to the plot or the characters psychology. The torture parts are also not terrible enough to please the "Painjunkies" out there, which makes sense if an upper-middle class family would perform it, but the characters most of the time make it looks like its not a big deal to do that to a person. The script is very poorly directed. Even for a TV Series Director. It takes too long to begin, and not long enough to finish. Climax of the story happens in 5 minutes. If the movie was turned into a 15 minutes episode of "Tales from the Crypt", it would be nice enough. But surely not far a movie. To the fans of Twisted Pictures, I advice you to wait for the Next Saw.

The Tortured (2010)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

After their child is kidnapped, tortured and murdered, the grieving parents (Erika Christensen, Jesse Metcalfe) decide to kidnap the man responsible on his transport to prison and teach him the true meaning of torture. THE TORTURED has a good idea (what would you do to the man who killed your child) but sadly the execution is so bad and so full of plot holes that at times the film becomes rather laughable. I think a lot of the blame has to go towards the director because the film just isn't intense, isn't scary and it's really hard to connect with the parents. As a parent of a three-year-old, what happens to the kid here would be one of the most horrible things you could experience and I understand where the parents would want to seek their own revenge. The problem is that the parents here do so many stupid things that you really have to wonder who the filmmakers were trying to fool. One of the biggest problems is when the parents kidnap the prisoner, they seem to overlook their fingerprints would be all over the stolen car. There's a manhunt for the prisoner and even though the U.S. Marshalls are told where he's at, it takes them forever to actually get there. All of this leads to an eventual twist in the story and I will admit that I found this to be the best thing in the film. Still, with so many other plot holes it was just impossible to take the film serious. The torture scenes are all pretty graphic but I'd say no more so than what you've seen in films like SAW or HOSTEL. This film, however, doesn't work as a drama, a thriller or as a horror movie. It's just too flat all around and it just never comes to life.

The movie is not as bad as I expected seeing the reviews. I did not see the twist coming actually, but other than that a quite basic one for a boring weekend night.

Craig and Elise Landry (Jesse Metcalfe and Erika Christensen) have their world torn apart when John Kozlowski (Bill Moseley), a drooling psychopath with deep-seated parent issues and an unrivalled collection of disturbing curios in his basement, abducts and murders their six year old son. When the killer is caught and brought to trial, but only receives a 25 year jail sentence for his heinous crime, the distraught couple decide to take the law into their own hands and exact a far more fitting punishment.

The Tortured is, as the title suggests, yet another in the recent wave of horror films that have (un)popularly been dubbed 'torture porn'; however, rather than try to make the viewer turn away in disgust at gory atrocities inflicted upon innocent victims, as is usually the case with this sub-genre, the intention here is to appeal to the audience's most primal emotions, fulfilling a basic desire for sweet justice by depicting a twisted piece of human garbage on the receiving end of some serious pain and humiliation for a change.

This twist on an already well-worn theme might have worked if it wasn't for an unnecessary and totally unbelievable twist at the end which robs the viewer of any real satisfaction. Add the fact that the violence perpetrated is far from stomach churning (the gore is most unimpressive with the yuckiest scene turning out to be a dream) and the plot requires major suspension of disbelief (for example, one is expected to believe that, after a van has somersaulted off a bridge, sailed through the air, and crashed face-down onto some jagged rocks, those inside have all miraculously survived death), and what you have is a bland and instantly forgettable effort, another nail in the coffin for a horror trend that should have been buried long ago.

A case of 'Don't judge a book by its cover' I fell for that… It has a similar feel to 'Law Abiding Citizen' if you have seen that.

Basically, it is couple seeking revenge on the man who destroyed their lives. They 'achieve'this in brutal circumstances so be warned.

I would seriously recommend viewing this movie. You might think it isn't cutting it for you but watch until the end, I will predict that 8/10 people will say at the end 'Actually, that was quite good' However, it felt like it was missing something to give it that extra quality… maybe the timing, it was relatively short which may have been the missing part for me.

All in all, a good watch and worth the time.