It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Hell, even The Room was more enjoyable.When you setup a far-fetched scenario and still want it grounded in somewhat reality, you really gotta sell it. Such as showing more than one scene of the victim acting normal (i.e. trying to escape) and more than one scene of the victim attempting to take on what's holding him/her back and failing. This film failed at these two simple rules and because of this, failed to really capture me into this realm.Worse, there's the ending...sorry, no spoilers, but *that ending.* I think you'll agree.The basic foundation is some sick, twisted cab driver seeks out female targets in order to bring them back to his isolated home and, yeah, kill them. But, one day, he gets more than he bargains for when one female victim comes with her son. Not wanting to kill said boy, the boy becomes the man's hostage for years and years. Supposedly, we're supposed to believe he attempts to escape once. ONCE. And never tried to stop the man when the man continued to bring home women to kill. And he claims he didn't understand or like that task.While the movie's competently shot and well-acted by the females and lead psycho, Vincent D'Onofrio, the suspension of disbelief is far too great and the ending twists are laughable at best. Wish I could recommend this, but then again, wish the movie led somewhere more promising and satisfying.Just watch 2015's Room. Sooo much a better film!***Final thoughts: Yes, 2015's Room came out after this, so maybe those filmmakers learned the lesson from this mostly "okay" movie.

CHAINED is another low budget serial killer movie that attempts to be all edgy and frightening by getting into the head of a killer. Inevitably it doesn't work very well, leaving this a bland disappointment lacking in vision and character. The best thing about it is the likable Vincent D'Onofrio, an actor who really shouldn't be wasting his talents in mindless torture porn films like this. The film sees D'Onofrio's killer taking on a disturbed young apprentice but there are some highly predictable twists in store which you'll see coming a mile off. It's unpleasant without being too graphic, and in the end the mindless screaming and killing bored me senseless.

Lynch tried here to do something bolder than anything you'll find on the horror shelf these days so on that count I applaud. Chilling as the title implies, but with a sensitivity and desire to immerse the viewer in illusion rather than merely jolt. I like the effort.A boy goes with his mother to the movies on a sunny afternoon, entering the place of illusion. They watch a grisly horror movie his dad told him not to. They come out on the other end ('in one ear and out the window') to be whisked to a remote house where real horror now is going to take place. The place is marvelously Lynch-esque, a bland suburban one-story house in the middle of flat fields that drown the screams.This is all inside the mind where the horrific impulse first grows. The erosion of self as being chained to a wall and having to serve a surrogate father who thinks people are merely pieces to rearrange. The familiarity chills, how inside the horror the boy must still have a life, so that an offering of a candybar that he can eat in front of the TV challenges our own grip next to the boy's.And then shift again to real life so that when captor and victim go out for their first spree together, the real night they and we encounter hums with all that was lost for the boy and all that still awaits, a teenager who could be doing teen stuff that night. (can he still? is it too late for that life?)Some potent stuff here. But there's a last minute twist that completely ruins it. Lynch simply isn't her father. The twist makes perfect symbolic sense if you go back to the start, it's planted to be that way and deliberately sustained by the author; a father who hides something horrible from the child. But it makes no sense as life. This is what Lynch Sr. has been working towards his whole career, more and more fluid slips to and from illusion, because it's all the same desiring mind whether awake or not. Here Jennifer yanks us by the arm. It's still more imaginative than most horror these days so you might wanna stop by one day.

The movie is intended to present a horrific topic in a palatable and informative manner. It's very difficult to illustrate such an aberrant and violent side of inhumanity without getting soiled. That being said, the writer did an amazing job of focusing more on the topic than the gore that such acts would present in reality. I also agree that the gender of the writer has no bearing on the execution or content of the movie. Films, books, art give us a glimpse of what is going on in our society ( subversive or overt), that we may not necessarily be aware is happening around us or even in a more remote area. It also provokes thought and discussion, and hopefully (at some point) remediation if the topic merits such. I give the writer a thumbs up. I also think the actors did an excellent job at portraying prime evil juxtaposed by innocence (the son). The ending? Well that caught me by surprise. It was a good twist.