Critic Reviews

What's missing from Kidnapped is a grander context - or richer subtext - to all the terror.

The result is a stylishly executed but punishing ultra-realistic thriller that might be classified as family torture porn.

My eyes never left the screen and my attention never wandered; in a restricted, technical sense of the term, Kidnapped is a masterpiece. But I make no claims for its moral value or for any cathartic or redemptive qualities.

Its scenario and criminals devoid of any representational depth, and without any substantial ideas underlying its carnage, the film ultimately just assumes the sadistically pragmatic POV of its one-dimensional thugs, pitilessly doling out brutality as a practical means to an end.

A technically proficient and aggressively unpleasant suspenser about sadistic home invaders.

Some kind of napping for sure: The line between rigor and tedium is crossed in this Madrid-set home-invasion thriller, captured in a dozen or so claustrophobic shots but impoverished as a piece of drama.

The long takes and lack of theatrical affect are presumably meant to heighten the realism by dispensing with film - fiction artifice, but in the process, everything that might lure a viewer - the seduction of style and plot or an engagement with characters - is forgotten.

Starting as a coldly realistic thriller, this film eventually loses its bearings as the director Miguel Ángel Vivas succumbs to a fit of nihilism, transforming Kidnapped into gruesome tit-for-tat torture porn.