Chained

Chained

Harrowing destruction of innocence

It’s ironic (and deeply tragic) that now we’re in the midst of awards season and our cinemas are full to the gunnels of bloated, flabby, gong-friendly epics (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and, yes, even Django Unchained) that require little or no active thought or engagement on the part of the audience, probably one of the best films of the year and certainly one off the grimmest, most thought-provoking, will slip past most people’s radars as Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s bleak, beautiful, haunting Chained is granted the most perfunctory of cinema releases this Friday before being rushed to DVD on Monday 4^th February.

Returning home after an afternoon trip to the cinema young Tim (Evan Bird) and his mother Sarah (Julia Ormond) make the mistake of getting into the wrong cab when they are picked up by the psychopathic Bob (Vincent D’Onofrio).  A prolific serial killer, Bob rapes and murders Sarah but decides to keep Tim to serve him.  Rechristening the boy “Rabbit” he chains him to the wall of his living room, allowing him just enough freedom of movement to move around Bob’s isolated house, prepare his meals and clean up after Bob’s messy kills every time he drags home a terrified, screaming woman.

Years pass, a bond developing between captor and victim, becoming a horrific, dysfunctional parody of the one-parent family, as Bob begins instructing the older Rabbit (Eamon Farren) in human anatomy and behaviour, forcing him to learn, moulding him, shaping him, grooming him to be just like Bob.  As Rabbit struggles desperately to hold onto his humanity, Bob decides it’s time he had the taste of a woman…

“If you steal from me, you get a beating. If you try an' escape, or you don't keep the house clean, you get a beating. If you make me nervous, or get in my way at all, a beating. From now on this is your world. It is only you, me, and them. I will call you Rabbit.”  Echoing the ordeal of Natascha Kampusch and the perverse desires and impulses of men like Josef Fritzl and Marc Dutroux, Chained is a dark, harrowing study of the destruction of innocence, of how children can be brutalised and turned into monsters in a never-ending cycle of abuse.  It’s a bleak, depressing, claustrophobic descent into Hell that offers little respite or escape for either its audience or its victim.

After the debacle that was the thankfully little-seen Bollywood horror Hisss, Chambers Lynch has crafted a sublimely disturbing film that’s every frame feels like it leaches the clammy madness of its central antagonist.  In Bob (a possible nod to her father’s Twin Peaks?) she’s given us a repellent, reprehensible villain who’s worryingly sympathetic.  The ogre of an adult fairytale, flashbacks hint that Bob wasn’t born a monster, he was made one, much as he’s trying to fashion Rabbit in his own likeness.  In the process she’s gifted Vincent D’Onofrio his most compelling, complex performance in decades, a terrifying mix of perverse monster and stern father-figure who, after lecturing Rabbit on the importance of educating and bettering oneself, asks: “You don't want to be shackled to this house for rest of your life, do you?” The irony of course being that Rabbit is quite literally shackled to the wall.  As Rabbit, Australian actor Eamon Farren is a revelation, giving a subtle, understated, increasingly ambiguous performance that grips while Evan Bird as the younger Rabbit is heartbreaking.  The true star of the film however is Jennifer Chambers Lynch who brings an unflinching feminist perspective to what could have been appallingly misogynistic material, crafting a film that’s merciless in its growing sense of dread and unease.

Oppressive, bleak, brutal and utterly terrifying, Chained is an unsettling, intelligent, genuinely transgressive piece of cinema that needs to be experienced.  If this film doesn’t give you sleepless nights, you probably already have a teenager chained up in your basement. 

David Watson

Directed by:

Jennifer Chambers Lynch

Written by:

Damian O'Donnell and Jennifer Chambers Lynch

Produced by:

Rhonda Baker, David Buelow and Lee Nelson

Starring:

Vincent D'Onofrio, Eamon Farren, Evan Bird, Julia Ormond, Conor Leslie and Jake Weber

Genres:

Horror, Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 34 minutes (approx.)

Certificate:

18

Rating:

5/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 1^st February

UK DVD Release Date:

Monday 4^th February