Chained

A thriller set in America. A taxi picks up a woman and her son. They are coming back from a cinema. The driver does not take them home. They arrive at a house. Outside the city, standing alone. The woman is taken inside. The boy is left in the car. Then the boy is brought in too. The mother is killed. The boy stays. The man's name is Bob. He gives him a job: he will clean the house, cook, and bury the bodies. He gives him a name: Rabbit. From there the film takes place in that house. For years. Bob drives his taxi. At intervals he brings a woman. Rabbit does the same work every time. He is not chained. The door is locked but after a point he stops trying to leave. The man teaches him to read. He gives him books on anatomy. There is a plan. Bob is preparing him to take his place. What the narrative is interested in is not murder but transmission: its idea is that the man wants to open to the boy the road he came down himself, and that he runs it as an education. Bob's past opens in flashback. His own father and his own childhood. The narrative does not offer it as an excuse. Rabbit grows. The man brings him a girl and asks him to do something. That scene is the turning point. A fact arrives at the end and the bond between the two characters takes on another meaning. The narrative mostly does not show the violence. A door closes and the sound remains. Vincent D'Onofrio plays the part entirely calm. He does not shout and never grows angry. Jennifer Lynch directed. The film had censorship trouble and was cut in some countries. Vincent D'Onofrio, Eamon Farren, Evan Bird and Julia Ormond are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes dark thrillers and psychological horror. Who it is not for: anyone with low tolerance; the subject is heavy, there is no hope through the narrative, and some scenes are directly unbearable.