The Captive
A24 | Release Date: December 12, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
36
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
11
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 25, 2014
This is Egoyan’s best film for a very long time: like Reynolds, he needed a hit, and The Captive is a welcome return to the form of The Sweet Hereafter. Its eeriness creeps up on you and taps you on the shoulder, and when you spin around, it’s still behind you. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comScout TafoyaDec 12, 2014
The Captive may appear to bite off a little more than it can chew but it's one of the most satisfyingly baroque thrillers of the year, and thanks to a perfectly judged performance by Ryan Reynolds, it's quietly heartbreaking, too. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 10, 2014
The structural gamesmanship is just a smokescreen, a way to obfuscate the pulp nature of what is, ultimately, little more than a glorified, low-aiming potboiler. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreJul 30, 2018
Only in Canada would an artist this fascinating, home-grown and maniacally uneven continue to draw the subsidies, attention and loyalty from his fellow Canadians now big Hollywood stars to get his increasingly unhinged thrillers made. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonDec 9, 2014
When it isn't TV-movie familiar, Egoyan's film is bughouse crazy, mixing in campy pulp elements that bleed pressure away from the story. Read full review
50
The DissolveMike D'AngeloDec 9, 2014
What’s most frustrating about The Captive is that it includes all the elements for a potentially great Egoyan movie—they’re just buried in the mountain of schlock. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChuck BowenDec 6, 2014
The film has the plot of an intensely lurid thriller, but Atom Egoyan can't bring himself to face that and actively tend to the story; instead, he trades in barely coherent, high-brow euphemisms. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceySep 4, 2014
Without a thin tether to credibility, this fussy, morbid fantasy simply slides off into the void. Read full review
50
IndieWireEric KohnMay 25, 2014
A lazily plotted and largely generic thriller. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleDec 18, 2014
Although Reynolds rises above the rest as a father consumed by sadness and anger, The Captive quickly devolves into scenes that feel like stilted dramatic re-creations demanding a noirish voice-over by "Cold Case Files" host Bill Kurtis. Read full review
40
TheWrapNov 20, 2014
The Captive is chock full of sealed rooms, kidnappings and abducted prisoners, but what it can never escape is its director's own shadow. Read full review
40
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 25, 2014
Beneath the well-tuned atmospherics lurks a schlocky, fairly ludicrous and pretty distasteful yarn that ultimately puts the stress in all the wrong places. Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 25, 2014
Not exciting enough to be taken as straightforward thriller and not engaging enough for a dramatic character piece, Egoyan's The Captive is held back by its own lame script and a distinct lack of necessity. Read full review
30
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisDec 11, 2014
The Captive seems tailor-made to explore the psychological damage that a child can suffer over a lengthy confinement, but instead leans too heavily on the chilly desolation of Paul Sarossy’s cinematography. What’s going on in the victim’s mind, or anyone else’s, is as invisible as what lies beneath the snow. Read full review
30
VarietyJustin ChangMay 25, 2014
The deftness with which the helmer manipulated time in his earlier pics eludes him in this generic procedural context... leaving us with obfuscation but no genuine sense of mystery. Read full review
25
HitfixDrew McWeenyMay 25, 2014
It is a ridiculous story, and these aren't human beings acting in a way that any of us would recognize. Read full review
25
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 25, 2014
Retreading "Prisoners" territory to an extent that at times makes you wonder if they’re two parts of some sort of Canadian auteur experiment that no one else is in on, what is lost in the transfer, however, is any of the Villeneuve film’s subtlety or shading, and we are left only with its most lurid, credulity-stretching highlights, with all other textures blasted out to snowy blankness. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 10, 2014
Surely an Oscar-nominated filmmaker like Atom Egoyan (“The Sweet Hereafter”) can do better than this nasty and unconvincing thriller. Read full review
20
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 25, 2014
As a straight procedural, this might have worked if Egoyan did not try the audience's patience and insult their intelligence with how utterly implausible his drama is. But line by line, scene by scene, it is offensively preposterous and crass. Read full review
20
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 25, 2014
The plotting here is so hopelessly tangled, clichéd, and bereft of psychological complexity that it's difficult to care what happens to any of these people. Read full review
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