Reviews

The movie Chained accomplishes something that millions of dollars in special effects can never do. It instills fear. Jennifer Chambers Lynch taps into something all of us have... Rational fear. This movie will no doubt send shivers down the spine of most people who watch it, but most especially anyone related to one of the more than 2,000 people who go missing every day in the United States. Fortunately the bad guy in this movie, Bob, does not use the little boy for sex. He terrorizes him in many other ways, though, starting by murdering his mother (while the little boy listened to her blood-curdling screams for help) to changing his name to "Rabbit" and teaching him to clean and bury the victims that Bob produces with shocking frequency. The kidnapper kept the boy for years, confining him with a chain most of the time. He forced the boy to work as a manservant: bathing his captor and taking care of all Bob's personal needs. Rabbit becomes dependent on Bob, for his place to sleep and the little bit of crumbs left for him in his master's food bowl. As time goes on Bob tells Rabbit that he wants him to learn and be smart, so he brings him books to read. The lonely and isolated young man finally has a way to mentally escape and develops remarkable knowledge about the human anatomy. Life changes for the captive after he makes his first kill. Rabbit receives a chair and privileged place for it in the living room. Bob is proud of his creation and wants to sit and talk with him. At one point they talk about women being like puzzles and Rabbit tells him that he will not take the puzzles apart again... Bob's perverse fascination with Rabbit becoming sexually active finally leads to his downfall. He sees the young man sensually touching the girl while she whispers to him, so he opens the door and repeatedly hollers Rabbit's name - causing the young man to stab her, and then screaming for Bob to leave. Little does he know that Rabbit stabbed her precisely where he wanted because he knew (and told her) she would be able to live for two days. He tells her to be quiet when he drags her to the basement, because, "dead girls don't make any noise. I've seen a lot of dead girls." Bob takes him on an outing, seemingly proud of his supposed protégé, who wrote "help" on the door of the cab while getting into it. Once he notices the betrayal, he punches Rabbit, cleans off the cab door, and then rushes home while talking about how he has to kill her now. They get back to the desolate property and Bob leaves Rabbit in the cab, inside the locked garage. He starts to go wild when he hears the girl screaming. Rabbit wants to save her, and he does. It is now that viewers may have a feel-good feeling in the pit of their stomach, for the first time in this movie thinking thank goodness he will finally get away, but the story is not over... Rabbit searches through Bob's personal paperwork while the young woman is seen siting on the same bed that he used for so many years. What he finds in those papers is yet another twist to the story that the watcher will never see coming! Watchers now see Rabbit driving in a car, straight to the house of his father and when he arrives he catches a glimpse of his father's new son. Viewers assumed that this sadistic tormentor, with his intrusive flashbacks of forced copulation between himself and his mother, was a nothing more than a deviant loose cannon. Perhaps when he pulled up in front of that movie theater in the beginning, it was random and the family happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time... It was not random. The conclusion features a confrontation between Rabbit and his father, who has violently lashed out at his wife, and is trying to make his forgotten son leave. Rabbit's father is Bob's brother, and the kidnapping was planned and paid for. He knew his wife would be killed and willingly left his only son to disappear, while he prospered and created a new family. Rabbit kills his father while his stepmother, who had been eavesdropping and heard everything, screamed at him to leave while she called 911 and told them that an unknown intruder had just killed her husband - giving the tortured man a chance to escape. This movie will stir several emotions in the viewer. Fear... Hate... Disgust... At the end there is shock, sorrow, and then confusion. While the credits are rolling you hear the sounds of Rabbit taking a shower, throwing something that sounds heavy into the cab, and then driving away. Was that the girl who was still alive the last time we knew? Was he going to continue the life he'd been forcefully taught, now that his mind was completely broken? This movie is a must for anyone who appreciates gritty, psychological horror, and in my opinion one of the best "unknown" movies of 2012.