Like a moths to a lamp, I am highly attracted to horror movies. Just as moths don’t care what type of lamp it is as long as it makes light, I don’t care if it’s an American, Japanese or, as in this case, Spanish horror movie, I want to see it. Miguel Ángel Vivas’s Kidnapped, also known by its original title of Secuestrados, caught my attention and made me want to watch it immediately before I even read the short plot synopsis. The DVD cover got me excited since most horror movie DVD covers consist of dark, hard to see ominous figures. As you can see that’s not the case here. Let me be the first to say that I can see Kidnapped having an American remake.
I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed this movie. It’s such a simple concept that it just works. There isn’t an unneeded attempt to develop characters, there’s non-stop action and it all really just comes together. It’s very similar in concept to Taken. In that movie you basically just know Liam Neeson has a daughter that was kidnapped, that’s when the non-stop ass kicking ensues. In Kidnapped you know that a family that seems to have some money moves into a house and that same night men invade their home. The father is kidnapped to retrieve money from debits cards at ATM’s while his daughter and wife are held hostage at home. Instead of one man kicking lots of French and Albanian ass, its burglar’s non-stop killing people.
I wish I could have more to say but there isn’t, its just a solid movie that you should go see. It’s not gory in the Saw sense, let its not scary in the Ring sense, it’s somewhere in the middle of that horror spectrum. If anything it tries to play off of the idea that this can happen to anyone similar, to what made people scared when watching Contagion. That’s about the only thing these movies have in common and it almost pains me to make the reference because Contagion pales in comparison to Kidnapped.
Besides the movie itself Manuela Vellés (Isa) is phenomenal. It’s hard to imagine that character being played any better. Her facial expressions at times are themselves down right scary. Simply because of her I am in the process of acquiring other movies she has acted in, just because I want to see if she’s this good all the time.
As this is a DVD review there were two special features. They were the making of trailers. I found it to be interesting but with a movie this good it doesn’t need any special features to up its value. Even if you hate subtitles you need to see this movie.
Rating: Spanish horror movie that’s so well done it makes you want to learn the language fluently just so you can enjoy in its native form…minus the subtitles. (9.5/10)
Kidnapped is now available on DVD thanks to IFC Midnight
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