Chained Review

31st Jan 2013

Chained, from Boxing Helena‘s Jennifer Chambers Lynch, is the study of serial killer Bob (Vincent D’Onofrio) who scoops up women in his taxi and murders them. In Chained, Bob captures a young boy after killing his mother. Rabbit, as Bob decides to call his new pet, will housekeep for him, make his food and clean up after him, under threat of pain and beating. Of course cleaning up, in this case, means more than washing the dishes. Rabbit is forced to dispose of the bodies of the victims Bob brings home.

Although in parts very nasty, Chained isn’t a torture porn film in the same vein as Saw or Hostel. While it is obvious that Bob rapes and murders his victims, in no way shying away from the violence, there are few deliberate shots of wounded, maimed women or gory, painful deaths. The emphasis is very much on the aftermath. Rabbit’s muddied face, streaked with tears, as he hears the girls’ terror, and his shuffling, bent-backed scrubbing of the bloodied floors. Younger Rabbit’s reactions work as foil for Bob’s chilling placidness.

D’Onofrio is scarily believable as the quiet, unassuming killer. His slightly lisped speech and physical tics, along with his almost emotionless responses to everything make him extremely sinister. His seeming detachment from his violent acts and the seeming ease with which he dispatches girl after girl in his creepy psycho-chic house is only belied in his nightmare-besieged sleep.

The film’s focus is on the relationship being forged between Rabbit and his captor. Older Rabbit’s (Eamon Farren) obvious curiosity about the world outside is tinged by his reluctance to engage in the monstrous acts of his mentor. The boy’s ‘rabbit in the headlights’ terror eventually appears to give way to a kind of acceptance of his place in the world. It is only Bob’s urging that seems to wake him from a sleepy acceptance of life as it stands – as an abused captive.

Bob’s own background as abused child is vividly sketched in some grainy flashback sequences, and though it may be a deeply disturbing set of images, the story is so familiar, Lynch almost needn’t have bothered. Except that the cyclical nature of abused and abuser is perhaps what she is trying to explore. I say perhaps because the careful work surrounding the strange relationship that evolves between Rabbit and Bob is, in the last act, completely undone by a pointless and unnecessary ‘twist’.

Infuriating and perplexing, it leaves you thinking ‘what the fuck?’ for a good few minutes. Lynch would have been better to stick with a nice neat, gory ending. It annoyed me so much I am deducting a star from what was a disturbing and restrained film about the very real horrors of the world.