Triple Bill Mini Musings: Killers & Writers...

Chained:
What's it about?
A taxi driving serial killer called Bob abducts a mother and child, takes them home, kills the mother, and then keeps the nine year old boy chained up in his house for close to a decade, treating him like a dog and his own post-kill cleaning attendant.
Who would I recognise in it?
Vincent D'Onofrio, Julia Ormond, Jake Weber.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Written and Directed by Jennifer Lynch - daughter of David, thus partly explaining the sheer darkness of this intensely disturbing psychological horror - Chained makes for a bleak but fascinating watch. Everything is deliberate and calculated, there are moments of shocking psychological conditioning, and the deep-freeze coldness of the selection and killing of victims by Bob is decidedly unsettling. The central performances by D'Onofrio (killer Bob, simmering threat and full stops in all the wrong places) and Eamon Farren (captive Tim, gaunt and painfully quiet) are utterly captivating - at times terrifying - while Lynch keeps the film moving forward at a precise pace. So pitch-perfect is the film for the duration that's it's confusing when a late-in-the-game development nearly derails everything ... however, recall one particular detail of a flashback and suddenly a bizarre left-field punch turns into a typically deliberate calculation that feeds right back into the nurture-over-nature theme. The last minutes do exhibit moments of messiness, but then maybe that's the point. Easily one of the most unsettling films I've ever seen. Great.

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