Chained (2012)
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 15
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 1
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 1
liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 646
My Rating
Movie Info
Coming home from a routine trip to the movies, eight-year-old Tim (Bird) and his mother, Sarah (Ormond) are picked up by a psychopathic cab driver named Bob (D'Onofrio). It ends up being their last ride together. Bob murders the young boy's mother and keeps Tim as his unwilling protégée, making him clean up the mess following each murder he commits. After a couple of aborted escape attempts, Bob chains Tim - now renamed Rabbit -- allowing just enough length to move freely within the house. As
Oct 2, 2012
Anchor Bay Films
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All Critics (15) | Top Critics (1) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (4) | DVD (1)
It boasts no character insight, social commentary or discernible overall point to counter charges that this is just a redundant wallow in arted-up, torture-porn cruelty.
Top CriticLynch...presents nuanced, sepia-tinged menace with a clear and determined eye.
Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David, does the filmmaking equivalent of drunkenly totalling dad's prized Ferrari.
[It] will likely find favour with horror audiences looking for something more thoughtful than another instalment of Saw.
Filmmaker Lynch (daughter of David) knows how to push our buttons, using misogynist violence to keep us uncomfortable right through this contained, stylish thriller.
In this claustrophobic cabbie horror, Jennifer Lynch makes us captive passengers as she traces a chain of domestic abuse to its bitter Oedipal end.
Chained is silly and nasty at the same time.
Impressively directed and superbly written, this is a chilling, thought-provoking horror movie with a pair of terrific performances by Vincent D'Onofrio and newcomer Eamon Farren.
Plenty nasty but singularly lacking in clever new twists on a weary genre.
A grimmer-than-grim tale of murder, incarceration and mayhem.
Not for the faint of heart or the weak of spirit, and probably not even for fans of more traditional horror films... this is a grenade lobbed into a genre that desperately needs its bones rattled.
It certainly makes for a traumatic watch.
Lynch's brutal 'buddy pic' takes some very dark turns, culminating in a walloping twist of a coda. Whether that twist is actually necessary or relevant - and I'm still undecided - this is a bleakly claustrophobic film about the ties that bind
Chained is confronting cinema like we rarely see, even with its share of hiccups.
Deserves credit for trying to mine some relatively intelligent chills out of something different, topical, and primally disturbing.
Audience Reviews for Chained
Super Reviewer
D'Onofrio has long been a favorite of mine and here he finally gets the lead role he deserves, a taxi driver who conveniently uses his profession to kidnap and murder young women. When he picks up Ormond and her young son, he kills the mother and decides to keep the boy as a slave. Years have passed and the boy is now a teenager (Farren) and has succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome. Feeling sympathetic, D'Onofrio decides it's time he let his captive out into the world but can only do this by forcing Farren to become a killer too.
Lynch creates a claustrophobic atmosphere and Shane Daly's impressive cinematography is reminiscent of Fincher. Despite the bleakness, there are moments of black humor, particularly a game of Top Trumps played with the driver's licences of D'Onofrio's victims. Much of Lynch's good work however is undone by an absurd final twist which the director claims was a creative decision forced on her. Lynch has most definitely stepped out of her father's shadow at this point and is now a film-maker worth keeping an eye on.
Super Reviewer
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However, like many other films of it's ilk, it suffers from a lackluster ending. I think Lynch and Co. wanted to add a whole other dimension of terror at the end and decided to tag on a twist that for this reviewer was ultimately unsatisfying. But, in this unsatisfying horror climate, Chained was a good way to spend 1 and 1/2 hours.