What at first seems to be a boring conventional kidnapping thriller with a teenage girl, who disobeys her mother and gets in trouble just because of that, soon becomes a quite good psychological play between the main three characters.
Vicki is a teenage girl, who is not coping well with the divorce of her parents. While dining with her mum, Vicki angrily admits that she resents her leaving her family and she mentions, that she is going to a party. Mum disallows. Next, there is the sequence, which kidnapping movies evidently can't live without. Vicki sneakes out of her mum's house and goes to a party. On her way, a car starts driving next to her...
From that point on, story develops many drama elements (gore scenes aside). There are 4 key characters that generate the story. One is a not-give-up fighter who is trapped with a manipulative psychopath and a confused life-scarred individual. Another important character is Vicki's mum, who does not get as much screen time as the other three, but just enough to add another aspect of tension - tension that only mother's unconditional love can provide.
This movie is about mother's love and care for their children. On one hand there is a mother, who chooses to leave her husband, but still wants to stay in touch with her daughter; and on the other hand, there is a mother who 'does not yet deserve to be a mother and must first prove it that she can be one.' The movie manages to show the incompatibility between the purest form of love and evilness in it's most twisted way.
The acting of the main cast is absolutely brilliant, especially Emma Booth's. How she manages to portray the most nuanced character of the story is extraordinary and worth pointing out.
Every act of violance is there for a reason and the movie without it would not get the same effect out of the scenes. It is a movie well worth watching because it manages to be optimistic even when researching the lowest hollow of a human nature.
