A Supermodel Captured, but Not by a Camera

Arriving in theaters front-loaded with a controversial billboard campaign (depicting the “abduction,” “confinement,” “torture” and “termination” of its star) as well as a rare censure from the Motion Picture Association of America, “Captivity” the movie has been thoroughly eclipsed by “Captivity” the marketing.

Which is, of course, what the film’s producers are probably hoping. Outrage, whether issuing from feminist groups or the writer-director Joss Whedon — who has likened the movie’s trailer to a recent CNN report on the public stoning of a young Kurdish woman — only fans the opening-weekend grosses. By the time those heightened expectations are dashed (What? No chain saw?), the money is in and the sequel already in the works. There are no refunds on your innocence.

Though hyped as a torture movie, “Captivity” is really the extreme revenge fantasy of every (slightly damaged) guy who ever lusted after a woman far out of his league. We are first introduced to the victim, a supermodel named Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert), via a long close-up of lips slathered in blood-red gloss. Soon those lips will be sipping a drugged apple martini at a SoHo charity event and then, a little later, screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” to a hooded abductor (Pruitt Taylor Vince) while their owner is strapped to a dungeon table. As images of Jennifer’s magazine covers flash around her, it’s clear that the only thing she has to apologize for is being attractive — and unavailable to mommy-damaged sadists.

A punish-the-tease tale of exhausting repetitiveness, Larry Cohen’s script is trapped in a tedious loop of drugging and threatening as Jennifer is shown the fates of previous victims and meets a cute fellow captive (Daniel Gillies). Yet after four days of psychological battery — during which her skirts and her heels climb ever higher — our heroine is still glowing and eager to make out. Like the infamous 1978 Hustler cover depicting a woman disappearing into a meat grinder while her legs wave invitingly at the viewer, Jennifer is a pervert’s fantasy. She is also, as a character, more silly than sympathetic.

The person who ought to be most embarrassed by this airless dud is its director, Roland Joffé, a two-time Oscar nominee who in the space of just five years regressed from working with Tom Stoppard to associating with the kind of people who mix eyeball smoothies and force-feed them to defenseless women. To be fair to Mr. Joffé, however, the movie has reportedly undergone substantial alterations since its filming in Moscow in 2005. Perhaps he’s as disgusted by the eyeballs as we are.

Despite the controversy, “Captivity” is no more than a desperate attempt to cling to the buzz of “Saw” before fans are distracted by the next shiny power tool. Like good sex, good horror requires mystery and imagination — you can give a villain a blender, brain damage and a closetful of slut-wear and he may still bore you to death. As for Ms. Cuthbert, having passed most of her time as Jack Bauer’s daughter on “24” in one sort of confinement or another, she knows the victim ropes better than most. “Elisha’s strength is in her fan base,” says one of the film’s producers. I just knew it had to be somewhere.

“Captivity” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Characters are burned with acid, buried in sand, drugged repeatedly — and then have sex.