Chained

IMDb
Bob, a cab-driving serial killer who stalks his prey on the city streets alongside his reluctant protégé Tim, who must make a life or death choice between following in Bob's footsteps or breaking free from his captor.



Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

Coming home from a routine trip to the movies, eight-year-old Tim (Bird) and his mother, Sarah (Ormond) are picked up by a psychopathic cab driver named Bob (D'Onofrio). It ends up being their last ride together. Bob murders the young boy's mother and keeps Tim as his unwilling protégée, making him clean up the mess following each murder he commits. After a couple of aborted escape attempts, Bob chains Tim - now renamed Rabbit -- allowing just enough length to move freely within the house. As the years pass, Bob starts instructing Rabbit, teaching him anatomy and human behavior. Now a teenager, Rabbit (Eamon Farren, X: Night of Vengeance) is slowly being pressed by Bob to start his own homicidal spree. Slowly but surely, he must soon choose whether to follow in Bob's serial killer footsteps or make one final, desperate attempt to break free...

Best-Horror-Movies

When Sarah Fittler (Julia Ormond) heads off to the movie theater with her young son, her loving husband (Jake Weber) insists they take a cab home rather than take their chances on the city bus, in spite of the fact that money is very tight. As luck would have it, a taxi comes slowly driving by the theater exit just as Sarah is about to call for one, and they climb inside for the ride home. This is the last ride she will ever take.

The youngster, however, is taken in by the cab driver “Bob” (Vincent D’Onofrio) and made to be his servant, renamed “Rabbit” (Evan Bird and Eamon Farren), and as the years go by Rabbit gets better and better at cleaning up after his captor’s regular and gruesome rapes and murders.

Chained is an interesting film from an interesting filmmaker – Jennifer Lynch. Lynch, daughter of the very strange David Lynch (Dune, Eraserhead, TV’s ‘Twin Peaks’), has her own style, morphed from the influence of her father’s propensity for the bizarre and macabre. Ms. Lynch has a few films that sort-of stray into the realm of horror, including Hisss (2010) and Surveillance (2008), but horror or not Lynch likely appeals most to the art-house crowd by using strange dialogue and tackling her impression of the darkness within the human psyche. It’s interesting to read reviews of Jennifer Lynch films in various online and print publications and see how her audience debates whether she is really a misogynist (woman hater) or a misandryist (man hater)… and whether her misandryism is in fact penis envy. Perhaps she is actually misanthropic – despising all humankind in equal measure. Okay folks, let’s face it… normal people don’t have these kinds of debates. But, these people are the audience of Jennifer Lynch.

Personally, I rather enjoyed Chained, primarily because of the strength of the performance by Vincent D’Onofrio as serial killer Bob. D’Onofrio is one sick dude, breaking into notoriety as ‘Gomer Pyle’ in Full Metal Jacket before jumping through the most diverse string of performances imaginable ranging from the insane manifestations of human imagination in The Cell (starring Jenny from the block) to housewife heartthrob in TV’s ‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent’. In Chained D’Onofrio plays an unapologetic rapist and killer of women with a past so troubled it defies belief… and apparently a desire to give young Rabbit an upbringing that will serve him through his life, if the kid can heal the scars from being an accessory to all of those rapes and murders, and recovers from the trauma of being chained to a wall inside the killer’s sparsely decorated house for 10 years. There is something about D’Onofrio’s portrayal of Bob, and how believable it is that he can naturally move from vicious killer to thoughtful father to hurt little child without it appearing contrived. D’Onofrio is an excellent actor.

The story itself is horrific, unbelievable, full of holes, yet oddly possible in a very morbid way. Occasionally news stories surface of an abducted child who lives for years with their captor in some way, whether it is locked in a back yard playing on a swing set or concealed under the kitchen sink. There are some sick f**kers in this world, and who knows what goes on over those years that they contain these youngsters. It’s not impossible that something like this could transpire I guess, though I prefer not to think about it. As Rabbit gets older he gets a bit more annoying, but again; D’Onofrio saves the day and even inspires a few quick glimpses of compassion from the audience.

It is highly likely that Jennifer Lynch is a weirdo, and that those who regularly follow her work are weirdos too. People said that her father’s Twin Peaks was too strange for prime time too though, and that sleeper hit ended up being a cultural phenomenon. Chained isn’t likely to elevate Jennifer to this level, but who knows… one of these days she just might happen upon the weirdo concept that will captivate the world. In the meantime, she’s got a good thing with Chained that bridges the gap between pseudo-intellectual art-house dorks and solid, down to earth horror freaks.

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