The Captive (2014)

A pre-teen is snatched while in her father's care and pressed into a life of child pornography and then -- when she outgrows that -- child procurement. Her father spends the next 8 years keeping the faith/obsession, while her mother seems to be sleepwalking through her life.

The first 10 minutes set an interesting mood: the unforgiving landscape, a loving community, and then a shocking crime... but the rest was a drag. The captivity scenes were sanitized and, while I wasn't looking forward to anything rapey, it felt somehow grosser to meet this now-kinda-bitchy teenager without knowing what she suffered to become this way. There was a scene late in the proceedings in which the father sees his grown daughter for the first time since she was kidnapped. But the thing was that the kidnappers had to plan this whole lure/treasure map/secure location scenario to make it happen -- and all at the behest of the girl who should have been, let's face it, fairly disposable to them. But somehow she had enough pull to demand a whole lot of effort from her captors, which was incredibly absurd.

The whole thing was weird and unsatisfying.

C-