Chained

One of them can’t be understood and the other looks like Robert Pattinson after a botched plastic surgery, great, really. Seriously, though, I would be very forgiving towards this well made exploitation film if it didn’t take itself so incredibly serious, especially since in several places it’s almost ridiculous. Lynch’s daughter tries to build an oppressive atmosphere around the boy’s hopeless situation (which works for the first few minutes), focusing on the psychological aspect of a kidnapper and his slave, but unfortunately, she’s unable to pull it off because she resorts to the most schematic methods and scriptwriting tricks conceivable, the sort that even authors of direct to DVD cheap horror trash would be ashamed of. This is in fact unacknowledged trash, just like every other film of this, the most boring and least interesting horror sub-genre (save a few honourable exceptions). And it’s that “unacknowledging” what bothers me the most. It’s really nothing special, not even in terms of inhumanity, perversion or violence. (27/09/2012)

Chained presents the very stark, difficult-to-digest psychology of a serial killer and the causes of his sociopathy. And its long-term effect on the “scholar” – a captive young man who has to live with it. With their “depraved mentor/suffering student” relationship, the director takes an audience-pleasing portrait of a murderer to the higher level of a study of perception and behavior with two diametrically different characters in extreme situations that they experience together, but each of them in a different way. And she is also able to surprise us with her screenwriting skills. Chained is unpleasant and paralyzing. And it's brilliant. (24/09/2021)