CAUGHT does not lend itself to my customary review style so this review will be a little ad hoc.
The set up for the movie is relatively straightforward: there is a family living in a house on or near the Kintry Moors in England in 1972. There's a father and mother, Andrew and Julie, respectively, a 6 or 7-year-old boy and an infant girl. Andrew and Julie are investigative reporters and they are currently poking around a mysterious military base being set up on the moor not far from their home.
A very well dressed but EXTREMELY peculiar couple, who call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Blair, suddenly show up on their doorstep. As viewers, the behavior of the Blairs is so peculiar we quickly come to the conclusion that the "Blairs" are aliens disguised as humans. This suspicion is confirmed nearly immediately and becomes incontrovertible as the movie progresses.
At the time of this writing, there's a lot of hate coming from the reviewers on IMDb, and I'd have to say that most of it is deserved. It's as if the director went out of his way to irritate his audience. Audiences respond negatively when a movie sets up mysteries that are left unresolved by the end of the movie. To make matters worse, it's unclear whether the unresolved mysteries are the result of a low-budget, artistic "vision", or just really inept directing.
Still, at the risk of flying in the face of what is currently universal derision, there were some redeemable elements of CAUGHT, at least in my own opinion, although I did have to indulge in a lot of potentially (and sometimes certainly) unwarranted speculation about what's actually going on in the picture. So much of the narrative is vague and ill-defined one has to indulge in speculation to make any sense of CAUGHT. So here are my potentially unwarranted speculations.
In the very first scene, where we first see the Blairs walking towards their encounter with Andrew and Julie, they move with perfect synchronicity. Walking, starting, stopping, head movements and etc. all in perfect unison. Clearly they they are "connected" in some way not in visible evidence (telepathy?). This suggests to me why the Blairs ability to communicate is so poor and their speech habits so peculiar. If you're an alien accustomed to telepathic communication, how difficult and unnatural must verbal communication seem?
Additionally, as we humans would tend to anthropomorphize aliens, what sort of anthropomorphizing might aliens fall into with respect to humans? How would that affect their perspectives and assumptions when trying to communicate?
The behavior of the Blairs suggests that Mr. Blair is of some sort of higher or managerial "rank" than the female, while Mrs. Blair has a decided tendency toward violence and hostility, like an attack dog. Mr. Blair seems rational, curious and sincerely desirous of communication, although focused on his objective. Mrs. Blair is hostile, murderous, and decidedly un-curious.
The focus of the Blairs is apparently tied to the fact that Andrew took some photographs of the mysterious military installation and in that process accidentally "caught" something having to do with these aliens. None of this is satisfactorily explained in CAUGHT. SOMETHING is clear in a photograph (as we are led to believe), and is the source of the conflict with the Blairs, but we never get to see what's in the photograph nor is it ever described. As viewers, all we can do is throw tons of speculation at the entire situation. Are the aliens there because of the military activity or is it the other way around? If the military is there because of the alien activity, why would the Blairs be particularly interested in what Julie and Andrew know about it? Why wouldn't the director let us see what was in the picture? Bad direction or the inability to create the necessary artwork to depict the event?
The second unresolved issue in CAUGHT is the fact that the 6 or 7-year-old boy is attempting to escape with the baby at the end of the movie and the movie just ends without us knowing for certain what happens to the boy and the baby. In my opinion, it's clear that they are caught and killed. Literally NOTHING that Andrew or Julie tried (in their exceedingly irritating half assed, incompetent and uncommitted way) ever worked at all. Not even a little bit. Why would the boy's lame escape attempt suddenly work? And the boy demonstrated an inability to follow parental commands AT ALL (run and escape with your sister). The Blairs showed no hesitancy to kill Andrew and Julie and did so. The boy, rather than doing his best and running with the infant, just sort of wandered away. We also catch half a glance of something considerably larger than the boy and in close proximity to him right before the end of the movie. So it is clear to me that the boy and the baby were killed just as the parents were.
Lastly, anecdotally, I should like to point out something non-British viewers might possibly miss. In England, depending upon the locale, one hears a lot of fox screams. If you're unaccustomed to it, and you're walking around in rural England in the dark and you hear it, it can make you soil your pants. It is a seriously creepy sound. (You can find examples of them on YouTube...) If you watch any British crime dramas like FATHER BROWN MYSTERIES, you often hear them in the background. As an American, you wonder what the hell that sound is you keep hearing and why nobody on screen is reacting to it at all. For Brits, it's no more noticeable or reason for comment than chirping birds.
Well, as it happens, fox screams are pretty much the same sounds that the aliens make, or at least the violent ones like Mrs. Blair. This is intended as a scarey punch line at the end of the movie as we realize that the recent "fox noises" that the family has been hearing recently has actually been aliens calling to each other as they've been observing the family leading up to the horrific final encounter. For a Brit, I'm guessing that would be a pretty creepy tie-in to a common British sound.
The set up for the movie is relatively straightforward: there is a family living in a house on or near the Kintry Moors in England in 1972. There's a father and mother, Andrew and Julie, respectively, a 6 or 7-year-old boy and an infant girl. Andrew and Julie are investigative reporters and they are currently poking around a mysterious military base being set up on the moor not far from their home.
A very well dressed but EXTREMELY peculiar couple, who call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Blair, suddenly show up on their doorstep. As viewers, the behavior of the Blairs is so peculiar we quickly come to the conclusion that the "Blairs" are aliens disguised as humans. This suspicion is confirmed nearly immediately and becomes incontrovertible as the movie progresses.
At the time of this writing, there's a lot of hate coming from the reviewers on IMDb, and I'd have to say that most of it is deserved. It's as if the director went out of his way to irritate his audience. Audiences respond negatively when a movie sets up mysteries that are left unresolved by the end of the movie. To make matters worse, it's unclear whether the unresolved mysteries are the result of a low-budget, artistic "vision", or just really inept directing.
Still, at the risk of flying in the face of what is currently universal derision, there were some redeemable elements of CAUGHT, at least in my own opinion, although I did have to indulge in a lot of potentially (and sometimes certainly) unwarranted speculation about what's actually going on in the picture. So much of the narrative is vague and ill-defined one has to indulge in speculation to make any sense of CAUGHT. So here are my potentially unwarranted speculations.
In the very first scene, where we first see the Blairs walking towards their encounter with Andrew and Julie, they move with perfect synchronicity. Walking, starting, stopping, head movements and etc. all in perfect unison. Clearly they they are "connected" in some way not in visible evidence (telepathy?). This suggests to me why the Blairs ability to communicate is so poor and their speech habits so peculiar. If you're an alien accustomed to telepathic communication, how difficult and unnatural must verbal communication seem?
Additionally, as we humans would tend to anthropomorphize aliens, what sort of anthropomorphizing might aliens fall into with respect to humans? How would that affect their perspectives and assumptions when trying to communicate?
The behavior of the Blairs suggests that Mr. Blair is of some sort of higher or managerial "rank" than the female, while Mrs. Blair has a decided tendency toward violence and hostility, like an attack dog. Mr. Blair seems rational, curious and sincerely desirous of communication, although focused on his objective. Mrs. Blair is hostile, murderous, and decidedly un-curious.
The focus of the Blairs is apparently tied to the fact that Andrew took some photographs of the mysterious military installation and in that process accidentally "caught" something having to do with these aliens. None of this is satisfactorily explained in CAUGHT. SOMETHING is clear in a photograph (as we are led to believe), and is the source of the conflict with the Blairs, but we never get to see what's in the photograph nor is it ever described. As viewers, all we can do is throw tons of speculation at the entire situation. Are the aliens there because of the military activity or is it the other way around? If the military is there because of the alien activity, why would the Blairs be particularly interested in what Julie and Andrew know about it? Why wouldn't the director let us see what was in the picture? Bad direction or the inability to create the necessary artwork to depict the event?
The second unresolved issue in CAUGHT is the fact that the 6 or 7-year-old boy is attempting to escape with the baby at the end of the movie and the movie just ends without us knowing for certain what happens to the boy and the baby. In my opinion, it's clear that they are caught and killed. Literally NOTHING that Andrew or Julie tried (in their exceedingly irritating half assed, incompetent and uncommitted way) ever worked at all. Not even a little bit. Why would the boy's lame escape attempt suddenly work? And the boy demonstrated an inability to follow parental commands AT ALL (run and escape with your sister). The Blairs showed no hesitancy to kill Andrew and Julie and did so. The boy, rather than doing his best and running with the infant, just sort of wandered away. We also catch half a glance of something considerably larger than the boy and in close proximity to him right before the end of the movie. So it is clear to me that the boy and the baby were killed just as the parents were.
Lastly, anecdotally, I should like to point out something non-British viewers might possibly miss. In England, depending upon the locale, one hears a lot of fox screams. If you're unaccustomed to it, and you're walking around in rural England in the dark and you hear it, it can make you soil your pants. It is a seriously creepy sound. (You can find examples of them on YouTube...) If you watch any British crime dramas like FATHER BROWN MYSTERIES, you often hear them in the background. As an American, you wonder what the hell that sound is you keep hearing and why nobody on screen is reacting to it at all. For Brits, it's no more noticeable or reason for comment than chirping birds.
Well, as it happens, fox screams are pretty much the same sounds that the aliens make, or at least the violent ones like Mrs. Blair. This is intended as a scarey punch line at the end of the movie as we realize that the recent "fox noises" that the family has been hearing recently has actually been aliens calling to each other as they've been observing the family leading up to the horrific final encounter. For a Brit, I'm guessing that would be a pretty creepy tie-in to a common British sound.