Horror Review – Caged (Captifs) 2011.

Feb 23, 2012
Hari Navarro

Caged (Captifs) – Dir. Yann Gozlan - © Sombrero Films

This aptly title film lives out most of its running time behind bars, but never comes close to fully capturing its audience.

Caged is a strange hybrid of fast-food gore (cartoon bad guys and the odd bucket or two of fake intestines), promising unfulfilled premise (three foreign doctors find themselves in fear of forcedly donating various parts to medicine) and a slightly higher than average level of acting.

Zoe Felix Almost Saves the Day… Almost.

Leading the pack in this mostly French speaking - there is a brief sprinkling of English - subtitled peek beneath the dark curtain, is French actress Zoe Felix (well known in France for her appearance in Dany Boon’s Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis). She plays Carole, hobbled by a somewhat shallow and unengaging back-story, she nonetheless excels in torquing up the tension and getting every last drop out of her wafer-thin role.

But, she has to work hard against the tide as we are immediately, and blatantly, telegraphed a back-story that involves the genesis of her ingrained pathologic fear of dogs. And, you can go out and bet your granny’s wedding ring that you will see that old nugget slide back into the narrative with just the same lack of finesse that was mustered to introduce it.

Experienced actor Eric Savin also brings weight and believability as Mathias, a seasoned doctor with a taste for younger woman and unnecessary grumpiness. Rounding off the trio is Samir (Arie Elmaleh) and his is the most thankless, and ironically most disposable, of the roles here to be had. Rejected in his ham-fisted romantic advances toward Carole, and forced to chomp through an even more farcical bickering match with Mathias; his is a character arc that never even finds lift-off let alone arc.

Pale Shades of the French Cinema Extreme

Caged seemed in possession of all the right tools: the sets and locales (bar the far too hygienic prison cells) go a long way in adding to the films steady building earthy sense of impending dread and bloody doom. As does the productions rural location, seemingly so far off of any map. Add to this a post-war mentality of nonchalance toward even the barest rules of humanity and the inclusion of a surgeon who appears to have missed more than the one lecture on ethics, and we seem more than good to go.

But, although it does maintain a certain elevated pace this is a familiar journey that leads nowhere. Well, maybe that’s totally fair. It does jump up a few gears in its final quarter and there is a cool chase through a cornfield, bullets slicing overhead and a pack of (you guessed it) ravenous dogs snapping at our heels… but you’ve been there and done that all before.

The much hoped for juicy twist never comes, and the film simply limps into its fade-to-black. Nothing to mull over, no subtext to decipher, not even a presumed dead cast member resurrecting from their premature slumber. By no means a filling meal, you will leave this buffet only mildly content at best.

With the French cinema so heavy with similar, far superior fair (Frontiere(s), Martyrs), I’m sure that we deserve much more than this safe, and largely uninspired, tip-toe through the would-be extreme.