CAPTIVITY (18)

Like its sadistic, blood-drenched kin - Hostel, the Saw films, Wolf Creek - Roland Joffe's thriller is all about the spectacle: the distorted faces of beautiful people suffering unimaginable pain, watched by the audience through their fingers.

It seems that it's no longer enough for horror films to cut to the bone: they have to chainsaw straight through, scooping out vital organs in stomach-churning close-up in the process.

Here, a pretty victim is forced to drink a smoothie of blood, eye-balls and body parts, and has to choose between unloading a shotgun into her pet pooch or taking the bullet herself.

The unwilling victim is beautiful and pampered fashion model Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert).

Splashed on various billboards and magazine covers, including adverts for her new perfume which declare "Do You Dare To Wear Jennifer?", she is a vision of physical perfection.

Unfortunately, one of her admirers takes their obsession with Jennifer to horrific extremes.

During a personal appearance at a nightclub, Jennifer is abducted by a demonic puppet-master with a talent for pain.

Held captive in a cell under CCTV surveillance, Jennifer is driven to the brink of insanity, until she realises there is a second victim, Gary (Daniel Gillies), being held in an adjoining cell.

Thrown together in hellish circumstances, Jennifer and Gary are drawn to one another, mutual distrust gradually turning to sexual attraction.

Captivity is a mindless orgy of slaughter, careering from a nameless girl taking an acid shower to a young man spluttering out blood from behind a plaster cast mask.

Screenwriters Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura spare no time fleshing out characters, and the demonic abductor kills, maims and eviscerates simply because it suits the film.

Director Roland Joffe, Oscar nominated for The Killing Fields and The Mission, points the camera in the direction of the splatter, content to lend his name and reputation to this nasty, misogynist drivel.