User Reviews

The movie is a really difficult watch. It's not easy seeing what is happening on screen and is meant to be that way. Vincent D'Onofrio is mesmerizing (in a bad or a good way, depending on how you look at it). His character is more than despicable, but the acting is amazing. So if you know that, you know why the voting is split down the middle. The ending is not helping either with most people.

The director talked about the ending and there is a different version of it, if I got it right (extended), which I'm looking forward to see on an upcoming release. Though I do feel the ending I saw was very good too. It might take you back a little, but if you think about it, it does make a lot of sense.

Jennifer Lynch's "Chained" is one of those films I walked away from completely disturbed but also captivated by. I find it hard to even call it a horror film because it doesn't fit in to the definition of the genre. A horror film to me is one that you walk away from with a sense of fun from being scared. There's nothing fun about "Chained." All I kept thinking the entire time I watched it is, "This really could and does happen." It's a gripping psychological thriller that throws in a few twists here and there to keep the viewer on their toes. Basically, it's exactly what you would expect from the daughter of director David Lynch.

Bob (Vincent D'Onofrio) is a cab driving serial killer who picks his victims up and takes them to his rural house. One afternoon, Bob picks up a little boy named Tim (Evan Bird) and his mother (Julia Ormond) from the movies. He takes the boy and his mother to his home. After killing Tim's mother, he chains the boy up and tells him he'll be his servant for the rest of his life and his name is now Rabbit. As Rabbit (Eamon Farren) grows into a teenager, he realizes the only way Bob will allow him to survive is by following in the killer's footsteps. He must find a way to escape from the psycho before it's too late.

If you're looking for a fun horror movie for Halloween, steer clear of "Chained." There's nothing enjoyable about it. That's not to say it isn't a great piece of cinema. I've never seen Vincent D'Onofrio play someone so disturbing. I don't know whether I should applaud him for his performance or be scared he was so good at playing the part. It's a serious film you'll cringe at in several parts because of the horrific things unfolding in front of you.

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With its sunny daylight ranch exteriors and sparse, sickly yellow interiors, Jennifer Lynch's Chained is not playing subtle at being a domestic dysfunction drama. But seeing how the film is also firmly exists in the gory serial-killer box, it is one of the more subtle and affecting entries in that particular sub-genre. This dichotomy makes the film a bit of an enigma, drifting between two radically different discomfort zones, but one that lingers because of it.

Tim and his mom (Julia Ormond, doing the director a favour here after knocking things out of the park in Lynch's previous thriller, Surveillance) get dropped off at the movies by dad. Living dangerously and in the interest of bonding, mom decides to let her 9 year old (at his request) check out a horror flick instead of the CGI kiddie movie. Catching a taxi home afterwards proves the real horror as the cabbie is quite unlicensed, and uses his gleaming yellow car as a way of getting easy victims. The cabbie's name is Bob and he is a serial killer. This is perhaps a nod to Ms. Lynch's father's spiritual serial killer of the same name from the Twin Peak's TV series featuring an isolated town and dead girls, for which Jennifer wrote the Diaries of Laura Palmer when she was a teenager. Bob takes the immediately suspicious (and immediately powerless) mother and son out to his isolated (no cellular signal) bungalow where he has his way, both in a sexual and violent sense, with mom but is at a momentary loss with what to do with a nine year old. In a coarse and lispy grunt, the cabbie tells the Tim, "She's not ever coming back, get used to it." And then he keeps him around to do the cooking and the cleaning - where the first job of non-indentured servitude is disposing of mom's mutilated corpse.

Bob is played by Vincent D'Onofrio, one of those versatile character actors who has been lost on network TV for some years, but has played everything from a struggling marine trainee (Full Metal Jacket) to Thor (Adventures in Babysitting) to Orson Welles (Ed Wood) to goofy alien antagonist (Men in Black) to a noseless thug (The Salton Sea) to yes, a deranged serial killer (The Cell). Here he is heavyset and brutish, no nonsense approach to life and memorable manner of speech. His father- son relationship with captive Tim is the heart of the film, black and twisted as it is. As several years pass, the victims (exclusively women) begin to pile up to the point where the two of them can play a disturbing game of 'go fish' with the collected set of drivers licenses. The film settles into the odd rhythm of Bob trying to remake Tim, rechristened him Rabbit, in his own image, less a slave and more an heir, and the nature vs. nurture conflict of Rabbit's unusual upbringing. It is rather heady and exceptionally well-handled stuff for what on the surface is essentially a one-room genre picture. This could have been based on a play. Maybe it was. Bob is nothing if not voracious in appetite, and things eventually head into icky loss-of- virginity for Rabbit, but the friction between surrogate parent and child - what the adult thinks is best for the child's future and how the child wants to take control of their own circumstances - take that Dexter. Tim learns human anatomy from books, but psychology from dear old 'dad.' Bob intones, "Listening is good," but fails to hear anything Rabbit has to say. Probably a common parenting error. He also offers, "Following through is the key to life," which is loaded with more than a bit of ironic foreshadowing.

If the film were content to stay with this tense drama, I would be proclaiming this film a minor masterpiece of the genre. But the writers (Damien O'Donnell and Jennifer Lynch), whether intending to really drive home the theme, or merely add an extra layer of clever to what is an oddly paced and low-key affair, decide to do some 'rug-pulling' in the plotting department that struck me as rather odd. I love the final shot and subsequent continuation of audio for the entire credit crawl, but the penultimate bit of extraneous family drama takes the film out of good stretching-the-audience drama and into bad over-plotted genre bombast. Even the former title of the film, Rabbit, suggests a more subtle and less pandering piece than Chained. As it stands, the film is very much worth your time, a conversation piece that is only enhanced by its NC-17 rating (apparently for 'realism' instead of the usual movie sex and violence) and when you get to the kooky ending, you can decide for yourself. The film stays with you.

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... overall 9/10 it should have been released worldwide

I found this film darkly interesting and disturbing in equal measures. You grow bored of films that use copious amounts of blood, violence and nudity to pad out weak plot lines and characters, to satisfy a certain type of person (I note a few people have commented on the lack of these things in previous reviews). There are tons of films that show the more depraved side of human nature in great and stomach turning detail, this is a different type of film that is more for the mind than the visual stimulation. It was well acted, and convincing by the two leads. I thought it was a better than average film. I liked the twist at the end, especially I think because it shows there are different ways to be a monster/evil. I liked the interaction between the two leads, and was interested to watch what would happen to Rabbit and how he would turn out - would he be corrupted, or would he prevail... Some say it was slow but I liked the pace of the film and don't feel every film needs to be at breakneck speed to keep your attention. I also like films that leave things for you to work out or come to your own conclusion about and not have tidy endings, and this one certainly does that.

I think it is a good film for those people who aren't offended by the subject matter but don't need boobs and blood to make their horror real, and are more chilled by implied suggestion and like a more psychological based thriller.

Random Irritations:

1. The link to child abuse and bad people. Some people are just bad without abuse. Some people are abused and do not turn out bad. I think the flashbacks were unnecessary and almost a way of trying 'excuse' Bob's behaviour - he can't help it he was abused himself rationale. I just think this is a weak and lazy plot device.

2. It's quite clear that this is not going to be a heartwarming Disney film from the title and the strap lines, and yet people who are easily offended still continue to watch it and then write reviews expressing shock and horror about the subject matter. a) bad things happen in real life, mankind has a great capacity for cruelty and violence - it being portrayed in a film does not change that fact. b) DON'T WATCH THESE TYPE OF FILMS....

3. People who seem to think character's behaviours are irrational or unrealistic based on the fact that they would not behave in that way... yes I'm speaking to you people who query about Rabbit not trying to escape and the girl trying to offer herself to him. It's easy to think this is what you would do in the luxury of your armchair and not in a fearful and perilous situation, but until you've experienced abject fear and been in a life threatening situation, I think no-one can really say what they would do or not do, as we all cope in different ways to survive extreme situations, and often its' very different to the way we think we would handle things...

Bob (Vincent D'Onofrio aka "Gomer Pyle" from "Full Metal Jacket) is a cab driver who has bad dreams about his past. To compensate his hobbies include kidnapping, rape, and killing young women. One of the women he has killed has a son who he maintains as a slave, hence the title. Needless to say, Tim (Eamon Farren) grows up rather abnormally.

Unlike other rape/slasher films this one isn't after cheap thrills and effects. Instead it concentrates on the unusual relationship between Bob and Tim, that of captor and captive who develops a slight case of Stockholm Syndrome.

The film trudges along and then at the end Jennifer Lynch reveals her genius with a surprise ending that well, frankly should not have been a surprise. It is a film that leaves you feeling weird. The film continues with sound through the final credits.

Parental guide: F-bombs, no intense sex/rape scenes, or nudity. Male torso nudity. Blood and gore is less graphic than most films of this genre.

The movie Chained accomplishes something that millions of dollars in special effects can never do. It instills fear. Jennifer Chambers Lynch taps into something all of us have... Rational fear. This movie will no doubt send shivers down the spine of most people who watch it, but most especially anyone related to one of the more than 2,000 people who go missing every day in the United States. Fortunately the bad guy in this movie, Bob, does not use the little boy for sex. He terrorizes him in many other ways, though, starting by murdering his mother (while the little boy listened to her blood-curdling screams for help) to changing his name to "Rabbit" and teaching him to clean and bury the victims that Bob produces with shocking frequency. The kidnapper kept the boy for years, confining him with a chain most of the time. He forced the boy to work as a manservant: bathing his captor and taking care of all Bob's personal needs. Rabbit becomes dependent on Bob, for his place to sleep and the little bit of crumbs left for him in his master's food bowl. As time goes on Bob tells Rabbit that he wants him to learn and be smart, so he brings him books to read. The lonely and isolated young man finally has a way to mentally escape and develops remarkable knowledge about the human anatomy. Life changes for the captive after he makes his first kill. Rabbit receives a chair and privileged place for it in the living room. Bob is proud of his creation and wants to sit and talk with him. At one point they talk about women being like puzzles and Rabbit tells him that he will not take the puzzles apart again... Bob's perverse fascination with Rabbit becoming sexually active finally leads to his downfall. He sees the young man sensually touching the girl while she whispers to him, so he opens the door and repeatedly hollers Rabbit's name - causing the young man to stab her, and then screaming for Bob to leave. Little does he know that Rabbit stabbed her precisely where he wanted because he knew (and told her) she would be able to live for two days. He tells her to be quiet when he drags her to the basement, because, "dead girls don't make any noise. I've seen a lot of dead girls." Bob takes him on an outing, seemingly proud of his supposed protégé, who wrote "help" on the door of the cab while getting into it. Once he notices the betrayal, he punches Rabbit, cleans off the cab door, and then rushes home while talking about how he has to kill her now. They get back to the desolate property and Bob leaves Rabbit in the cab, inside the locked garage. He starts to go wild when he hears the girl screaming. Rabbit wants to save her, and he does. It is now that viewers may have a feel-good feeling in the pit of their stomach, for the first time in this movie thinking thank goodness he will finally get away, but the story is not over... Rabbit searches through Bob's personal paperwork while the young woman is seen siting on the same bed that he used for so many years. What he finds in those papers is yet another twist to the story that the watcher will never see coming! Watchers now see Rabbit driving in a car, straight to the house of his father and when he arrives he catches a glimpse of his father's new son. Viewers assumed that this sadistic tormentor, with his intrusive flashbacks of forced copulation between himself and his mother, was a nothing more than a deviant loose cannon. Perhaps when he pulled up in front of that movie theater in the beginning, it was random and the family happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time... It was not random. The conclusion features a confrontation between Rabbit and his father, who has violently lashed out at his wife, and is trying to make his forgotten son leave. Rabbit's father is Bob's brother, and the kidnapping was planned and paid for. He knew his wife would be killed and willingly left his only son to disappear, while he prospered and created a new family. Rabbit kills his father while his stepmother, who had been eavesdropping and heard everything, screamed at him to leave while she called 911 and told them that an unknown intruder had just killed her husband - giving the tortured man a chance to escape. This movie will stir several emotions in the viewer. Fear... Hate... Disgust... At the end there is shock, sorrow, and then confusion. While the credits are rolling you hear the sounds of Rabbit taking a shower, throwing something that sounds heavy into the cab, and then driving away. Was that the girl who was still alive the last time we knew? Was he going to continue the life he'd been forcefully taught, now that his mind was completely broken? This movie is a must for anyone who appreciates gritty, psychological horror, and in my opinion one of the best "unknown" movies of 2012.

Jennifer Lynch's 'Chained' is an unapologetic psychological thriller. Some have billed this as a horror film, however that's not the case. 'Chained' will take you out of your comfort zone and leave you talking about it for days. And although it will be in your 'serial killer' film collection, this particular movie has a different quality and lasting psychological effect that will haunt you the next time you decide to take a cab.

'Chained' starts off with Tim, a 9 year old boy and his mother (Julia Ormond), who are dropped off at the local cinema by dad (Jake Weber). We instantly see how cool Tim's mom is by letting him see the horror film instead of the new kids movie. Once the film is over, by the instructions of dad, they are supposed to take a cab home instead of the bus. They hail a taxi driven by Bob (Vincent D'Onofrio), who seems like your typical cab driver.

Soon after they get in the car, and a couple of missed turns, Tim and his mother realize that Bob is not really a cab driver, but a serial killer and that bad things are about to happen. Bob drives Tim and his mother to his remote house with no cellular signal. Bob takes Tim's mother into the house and leaves Tim in the car as Bob violently rapes and ultimately kills her. Bob is confused with what to do with this 9 year old boy, as he only kills women, and decides to keep Tim around to cook and clean. And by clean, I mean clean up the brutal and bloody murders Bob leaves in his house, starting with his own mother.

After a couple of failed attempts of escape, Bob chains Tim to the house and leaves him enough lag to get around the home completely. This made me think of 'Black Snake Moan'. We fast forward a decade into the future and Tim is still chained, but is now a teenager (Eamon Farren). From here, we see Bob try and teach Tim how to be a serial killer in a sick and twisted father-son type fashion. Here we see Bob treating Tim more like an heir to throne rather than a prisoner. There is even a very creepy scene where the two play Go-Fish with a deck of victim's licenses.

This film differs from the rest of the serial kille films, as it doesn't rely on showing bloody and ultra violent murders, but rather shows a steady paced storyline with intense psychological trauma. This film was originally titled 'Rabbit', due to what Bob calls Tim, but was later changed to 'Chained'. Lynch did a great job of filming the beautiful outdoor scenery of green pastures and bright yellow colored cab, and then transitioning into a dirty brown and yellow interior for a large chunk of the film. It's as if we were seeing the surroundings rotting from start to finish.

D'Onofrio does an amazing job as Bob. He has come a long way from Leonard Lawrence in 'Full Metal Jacket' and Thor in 'Adventures in Babysitting'. His twisted father-son relationship with Tim is so disturbing, that I wouldn't be surprised if he won some kind of award for his role. Farren and Ormond also turn in great performances. I'm sure this was a difficult film to shoot, considering the subject matter, and they all rose to the occasion. 'Chained' is a movie you should own. It's a conversation piece that you will be showing your cinephile friends and talking about over and over again. Even with its strange twist ending, 'Chained' will linger around for days to come.