With how terrible the outrageously overacting is, combined with the playground-level soap opera dialogue, and the ridiculous casting you'd think this were a self-aware parody. Except it's not. Or it's not meant to be.
THE CAST: You have a cast that all look about the same age playing middle-age parents to middle-age children, a hulking bodybuilder with long shaggy hair we're meant to believe is a college professor (who later turns into a special needs "Doofy" from "Scary Movie"), a captive daughter making the oddest facial expressions to display panic, a villainess who villains with the subtlety of a cartoon, and I guess Emmanuelle Vaugier doing what she can with what's given.
THE RIDICULOUSNESS: -- The pair of detectives who show up to work the missing daughter case are ALSO the detectives working the homicide case of the deaths in the film.
-- The daughter is abducted by an intruder who is already inside of her small dorm room AFTER she answers a knock at her door made by that same intruder.
-- The Doofy professor secretly photographs everyone WHILE standing out in the open.
-- Even the villainess blonde stands out in the open across the street of a diner the author & detective are in, staring as if she can hear their conversation.
-- The author thinks to coerce the kidnapper into moving her daughter to another location of her choosing (with a live feed camera set up identical to before).
I know this is melodrama so it is meant to be exaggerated heightened drama, but wow does this movie make no effort to be watchable.
