Movies like this intrigue the fuck out of me. How did they get made? Who are the people making them? Why do they get made? What do the people involved, from those working the cameras, to those writing the script, to those putting up the money, think they're accomplishing?
The story of a Senators daughter who has run away from home to be a hooker but gets kidnapped by a psycho and forced to endure.......well to be honest, listening to her scream in broken English for the whole movie, it almost feels like to the torturer is getting the worst of it.
So here's what I'm wondering. Whoever made this shit obviously knew they had no money. Yet they still decided to make it a story about A United States Congressman. "We'll put one of those signs outside the house he lives in that say So And So For Congress, that will make it seem real!" Then to top it off, the exterior they use is of a random house on a random block that looks at much like a Senators house as it does the Queen Of England's.
So the Congressmans daughter runs away from home to be a hooker and promptly gets kidnapped. This girl. Let me tell you about this girl. She speaks with a heavy South American accent. This is explained away in a scene where her Father explains that she was born in Mexico and raised in Venezuela when he was ambassador there. It might explain the accent, but it doesn't explain why the hell her English is a broken mess. But who cares, it's important this movie be made. She yells "fuck" a lot, she gets tortured, if that's what you want to call it. Mostly she's just put in a room. The room she's in is tiny, most of the sets in the movie are small and very tightly shot. Anyway, the room she's in is brick covered in blankets, there's a scene in the film in which she tries to escape and takes about 10 days cutting through the blanket only to discover the brick wall. I had no idea what was happening there. There are other scenes where she does stuff, but it's so badly shot you can't tell what's going on. At one point she's either putting scrapings from the wall she's trying to dig through, or food, in the toilet. Problem is that the toilet is just a bucket with a toilet seat, so it's going anywhere, and it's not gonna stay hidden for long. As she's doing it, she's got this big blanket wrapped over her as she peeks her head out at the camera that's keeping tabs on her. She might was well stand up and say "Hey misser, I'ma hide someting in dis bucket".
So the Congressman has gone to the police but they don't have any leads, so he hires a detective. This is a brilliant scene in which the Senator, his wife, their bodyguard (he's got a black suit on, black sunglasses, and stands with his arms crossed in front of him, so you know he's a bodyguard) meet with the detective. The acting here is glorious, the Senator is tough, the wife is crying, the detective is inquisitive, and it's all so bloody awful. The premise is ridiculous, the acting is dreadful, the script seems to be cut and paste from various NYPD Blue episodes.
Did your daughter use drugs? He asked with a blank look on his face.
Has she ever threatened to run away from home? He asks, looking like he's dreaming of a meatball parm.
At one point our heroin attempts to commit suicide by hanging herself with a strand of torn sheet. So she sits on the bed, which is a normal sized bed, puts one end of the sheet on something on the ceiling, and then sits on the edge of the bed. Now I'm no Alfred Einstein, but the physics here don't make much sense at all.
There's a twist, but not really, because you see it coming a mile away. The narrative is so confused, it's a moral tale about how kids should do what their parents say and listen to them and yadda yadda, but it's not playing to kids. So, I don't know. I just don't know.
Anyway the movie wraps up by having the torturer explain everything he's done, then they show flashbacks of everything he's done, and this music plays over top of the montage that tries to make it look like there's some Usual Suspects level of kick ass reveal going on here. My lord.
A cheaply made, cheap looking, badly acted movie whose entire target audience seems to be the crew involved in making it. Pray For Dawn had me praying for credits.
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