#CAPTURED * USA 2017 Dir: Joe Homokay. 81 mins
With its overage, unconvincing Californian “high school” students and simplistic desktop mock-up (seemingly coming to you from the year 1998), this desperate latter-day slasher picture resembles the work of a frantically masturbating 50-year-old man attempting to understand social media while cashing in on the format of the far superior UNFRIENDED. It deploys multi-person Skype-style conversations, video diaries, cell phone footage and Snapchat-style apps. The action starts with a young woman stripping for sex chat room “Peeper”, and getting stabbed to death by an over-enthusiastic punter who bursts into her room shouting “Daddy’s home!” like some disturbing, never-aired episode of THE COSBY SHOW.
The clip is viewed by said high schoolers as “meta-shit” and considered a staged home invasion. Meanwhile, the God-fearing killer pursues further one-dimensional characters on his mission “to cleanse your heart of all that sin”. Obnoxious “teens” are cavalier about the killings of classmates and happy to cash in themselves on “Peeper”, while the heroine – moving schools after fucking her soccer coach – is utterly unsympathetic. The killer’s one-liners are as lame as the lower quality 80’s equivalents: “Now it’s time for redemption!” Anyone who stays the course will be totally in agreement with the character who says, “I feel like shit could literally not get any worse right now!”
Review by Steven West