THE TORTURED (2010)

Available streaming on Tubi from IFC Films!
Directed by Robert Lieberman.
Written by Marek Posival.
Check out the trailer here!!

Though well acted and decently paced, THE TORTURED succeeded in frustrating the hell out of me by the end. I have to give props to the people behind this film for going places that few dare to go. The ambiguously “eye for an eye” tone is something that is quite common in cinema with everything from DEATH WISH to THE PUNISHER to DEATH SENTENCE telling us that the punishment must fit the crime. Here, the point is driven home even more as seemingly good people are driven mad with revenge to the point where they themselves become the monsters they once feared. But given the fact that every night on the news it’s evident that barbarism is just a few baby steps away from today’s society, this film is more relevant than ever, despite its flaws.

A young couple (Erika Christensen and Jesse Metcalfe) have their child abducted right out of their front yard and find themselves obsessed with bringing the guy to justice. When he is given a shortened term due to the abductor’s (Bill Moseley) agreement to show the police where more bodies are, the couple is pushed to the moral brink and decide to bust him out and enact their own vengeance upon him.

As the synopsis would suggest, this is a dark film and the scenes leading up to the abductor’s abduction are well acted by Christensen and Metcalfe. The fact that this couple is so likable only highlights the horror as they become torturers themselves as the story goes on. This film would fall apart if not for the performances by Christensen and Metcalfe. Though some of the scenes seem a bit too meaty for Metcalf to handle, Christensen shows how much acting talent she has here and offers a sympathetic performance as the agonizing mother of the abducted child. Moseley has a much smaller part here, but his moments of solitude before his arrest are creepy as hell as the abductor speaks in different voices and wears clown makeup while tormenting the child. Shades of both SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ Buffalo Bill and real-life child molester John Wayne Gacy are evident in Moseley’s performance, but not so much that they are distractingly so.

The real problem I had with the ending was the fact that it goes the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS route with a key scene of the film. This is a pretty obvious lift from the iconic film, one I began to figure out a short while before the actual reveal. My problem wasn’t with this twist itself, but in the resolution and the fact that there is absolutely no reactionary shot from Christensen and Metcalf, leaving the film on an extremely disappointing note.

The fact that THE TORTURED ends in such a dissatisfying manner punctuates this film with a feeling of distaste that almost wipes the palate clean of the good performances and tight scripting that occurred in most of the minutes prior to the abrupt ending.