Captive

From beginning to, well, I didn't make it to the end, this film is horrible. Throwaway writing poorly executed by lazy directing and stale acting. I feel like this movie was written AND filmed in a weekend. Nothing in this film provokes any sort of interest. It felt like a chore to even make it as far as I did. I found myself more interested in my neighbors moving out and found myself watching them from my window more than I watched this movie. I can't, for the life of me, understand how movies like this get made. Also, it seems as if the actors in this movie are pushing forty but have nothing better to do than break into a house for the weekend? A movie with no redeeming qualities and a complete waste of everyone's time. Including the viewer.

There are some film that I just can't work out. Sometimes they included all the elements of a genre that I should like - and yet I end up hating the finished product. Other times (like now) this one has a lot of negatives, yet I came away feeling like I hadn't wasted an hour and a half of my life.

I'm not sure whether it's a 'spoiler' to talk about the promotional front cover/poster, as it's kind of in your face already whenever you see the cover art of image on a streaming service. It does kind of give the game away as to what the film's about. The blurb reads something like 'a group of stoners break into a house to get high, but get more than they bargained for.' That could leave you wondering what they come up against and what the threat is they face. But if you've seen the poster then you'll have immediately seen the fangs, indicating that this is a vampire movie.

It's sort of like an extended episode of 'Buffy' but aimed more at adults. The teenagers get stalked in one large house while the plot if peppered with some vague 'love story' elements that any good (or terrible!) teen drama is littered with.

The dialogue is average at best. The acting is passable, but, to be fair, the actors aren't given a lot to work with! The plot is kind of predictable and you'll know who's going to get their pretty little teenage throat chomped on and any bloodsplatter is blatantly computer-generated.

In other words... this film has more than its fair share of faults. And I actually quite enjoyed it. Yes, it's no masterpiece and I may not remember it this time next year, but it was serviceable enough for what it was. I was clearly in the mood for something that wasn't particularly taxing and possibly in a very forgiving mood. There's certainly a hundred better vampire movies and TV shows out there, but there are certainly some worse ones, too - at least the vamps didn't even come close to 'sparkling' in sunlight here.

Definitely a B-movie, but I didn't mind it.

It has a lot of the usual tropes for this type of movie (i.e. Young people together in a house, who have internal conflicts). The acting seems fair, at least fair when it doesn't seem like some of the actors were deliberately trying to go over the top.

My biggest complaint is that, even though there are a million different 'vampire rules' in a million different books and movies, it bugs me when a movie doesn't follow its own internal rules.

If you can't find anything else really on, I'd give it a go. One can't only watch 9s & 10s; if so, one wouldn't be watching a lot of movies.

I assumed that this would suck because it's a Tubi Original, but I was pleasantly surprised. If you've watched enough horror movies, especially slasher movies, you already know all of the story beats--though I appreciated the way that the script makes some creative detours that defy expectations. The cast is uniformly strong, even if the set up beggars belief. You could do a LOT worse than CAPTIVE.

I gave this movie a 5. It's not something you're going to remember years from now, but it's good enough to hook you in and keep you watching. And kudos to Tubi for bringing this worthwhile original to their platform.

1-3 Don't waste your time 4-6 Good 7-9 Excellent 10 Outstanding.

I've never really rated Scout Taylor-Compton as a scream queen and figured it wouldn't be too long before she started to appear in low budget garbage like this (as opposed to the higher budget garbage she is best known for: Halloween and April Fool's Day).

In Captive, Taylor-Compton plays Ashley, one of a group of stoner friends who break into a house while the owners are away; while exploring the property, they discover a man chained up in the basement and release him, ignoring the crucifixes on the wall and the line of salt that encircles him. Whaddya know? He's a strigoi (that's a vampire in layman's terms) and he wants Ashley for his mate.

Predictably plotted, badly directed, poorly acted tosh, Captive is bottom tier vampire nonsense that I imagine will only appeal to Scout Taylor-Compton fans desperate to see the actress in a swimsuit. There's little in the way of special effects or gore, with blood sprays being of the badly composited digital variety, and the film's twist at the end is easy to guess.

2/10.