Caught (I) (2017) User Reviews

SPIDERS FROM MARS

[gengar843 · 5/10 · 14 April 2018]

Let's get right to it. The story is very simple - photojournalist couple receives visit from oddly-behaving man and woman, who turn out to be creatures the photojournalists have accidentally "caught" on film. The photojournalists are "caught" at home, "caught" unawares because they have no clue what's on the film until they take a closer look. It's all very claustrophobic, helped immensely by the acting skills of the four main characters, and the suspenseful score. Unfortuately, it's very slow, and seems repetitive, trying to pad what is essentially a short. The audience is therefore also "caught" in this ponderous web.

I say web because I believe the creatures are spiders. It's never revealed outright but there ARE clues. (1) A brief scene where a spider (brown recluse?) crawls up an arm. Why is that in the film? Yes, it's creepy but the film doesn't otherwise use symbolism to create atmosphere. (2) Though the audience never sees the photo in Andrew's hand, there IS a photo hanging in the darkroom which looks to me like a giant spider creature. (3) While some may think it's a cat-and-mouse game the creatures are playing, I see it as spider-and-fly. (4) Once their human features are punctured, the creatures revealed seem more invertebrate than vertebrate. (5) The creatures ooze saliva on these human victims quite often, as if trying to paralyze them rather than merely menace them.

It's not a bad film by any means but it DOES seem as if writer and producer Alex Francise intentionally wanted viewer frustration, as if they too should be "caught" in a trap from which there is no resolution. True to form, the film ends on a dim note, neither apocalyptic nor hopeful.

One last note: Baby Emily might be part creature offspring. The creatures' interest in whether Andrew and Julie were "copulating" at the moors indicates they have not only come for the photos but also for the infant. Interesting anyway.

Don't get "Caught" Wasting your Time

[jtncsmistad · 5/10 · 31 March 2018]

When I saw the trailer for the new British space creature feature "Caught" I thought, "Man, this looks stupid." Alas, I wound up watching it anyway. Lesson learned. Sometimes you gotta go with your first impression.

It's not that the premise, nor the acting, are bad here. They really are not. But the pace is utterly atrocious. And there is absolutely NO payoff in the end.

Hey. Filmmakers. What in the hell was so horrifying about that which was caught?? Would have been nice to know here.

It just mighta saved your flick.

We've got to get better neighbors.

[S_Soma · 5/10 · 2 April 2018]

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.

Pointless movie, and this coming from a guy who loves tons of pointless movies.

[vladimirpolaski · 1/10 · 1 April 2018]

There are very few movies I've watched in my life where the director intentionally wasted audience's time.

It's like reading a mystery novel where someone dies and a detective starts investigating, and in the end, the detective just gives up and leaves without solving the mystery.

I use this analogy because this entire movie was literally centered around the mystery of the two visitor characters. What good is a mystery movie if they intentionally don't resolve the mystery?

To be clear I love abstract movies, and movies where the entire plot is a metaphor, such as "mother". This movie was not one of them.

It's just a plain "mystery movie" that doesn't solve the mystery, doesn't even give you a hint almost as if the director wanted to troll the audience.

A Premise is Not a Story

[seriouscritic-42569 · 3/10 · 16 August 2018]

Two creepy strangers show up for tea: that is a premise, and depending on what you do with it, not a particularly bad one. However it is not a story. Occasionally having something creepier inexplicably happen is adding incident; it is still not a story. This film, sadly, has a premise and enough incident to make for a mysterious half hour but then it would be nice if it went somewhere from there. And it doesn't. A lot is hinted at but nothing elaborated on or explained. The actors are all rather good but they are only given fifteen minutes worth of screenplay and forced to stretch and repeat until the film ends. Almost literally. When characters finally learn a little of what has been so confusingly hinted at, it doesn't change anything for the situation, and the audience is never even let in on it, because to resolve a story and reveal mysteries you would need a story and at least some ideas to begin with. And all they had was a premise. The whole exercise becomes ultimately pointless. It might have been a successful and well-made short film, but as a feature it is a frustrating trial.

Frustrating

[drramos4 · 2/10 · 23 June 2020]

I've read many reviews of this movie. A lot of people hated it and didn't get it. Others are defending it, saying that viewers weren't using their imagination to get it. If wanted to use my imagination, then I would have read a book. Sorry, I don't enjoy movies that don't have a resolution.

Pointless drivel! Story totally unresolved, in the end.

[alloutnow · 1/10 · 1 April 2018]

This is such a pointless film. The story has no message; doesn't give any answers about anything and the only thing it adds to the viewers experience is a loathsome, dark feeling of sadness and a lingering depressive state of mind. It isn't even that scary, just gory make-up and unnecessary dialogue about nothing... the story isn't even resolved in the end.

When the end titles start to roll the viewer has no answers about anything relating the the story that is being attempted to be told by the writers, director and actors. I was just left with a bad taste in my mouth about this mess of a film.

The acting is OK, I suppose, but this film had better never been made. Bad script and utterly ridiculous story.

Tea With The Blairs!

[doorsscorpywag · 6/10 · 30 March 2018]

Set in 1972 Andrew & Julie are a couple of would be investigative journalists who are starting to work on an expose of a new army base on the nearby moor. 'Must be nukes' they tell their editor.

Then a couple of strange Jehovah's Witnesses with a problem with postmen hove into view. They claim they are from the Moor and have some questions so the pair invite them in for tea thinking they are officials of some kind.

The strange couple introduce themselves as Mr & Mrs Blair. Everybody sits down. The Blair's rather oddly and tea is served. Mrs Blair complains it is hot. Andrew points out Mrs Blair's shoelace is undone. Mr Blair says she will get around to it shortly.

Then the questions begin and are strange at first and get stranger as they progress. When Andrew gets annoyed Mrs Blair suddenly screams maniacally and attacks him. Mr Blair explains 'she has killed and you would not be the first today'. The interview goes downhill from there.

Mr Blair seems to want something they have but they don't know what it is.

April Pearson & Cian Barry, who I am not familiar with, play the Blair's really well and give a new insight into creepy. Especially April who steals the show. It's as if we are in Strangers territory but its even weirder than that.

It's a pretty well done mostly indoor mystery drama with some good acting from the 4 leads.

What's it about? Check it out as it is worth an hour and a half of your time. It's not a horror as such but is well acted and a decent story. I gave it 5 but added a 1+ as it was an attempt to do something new with a tired genre. I guess with a bigger budget it could have been something a bit special.

On the downside there is one glaring omission that will have you spitting feathers. But decent effort all the same.

I am dumber for having watched this.

[petewells-26970 · 1/10 · 9 April 2018]

Weird people invade your home and barf on you and your floors. They're looking for something "Caught". They mean a picture of something you never see. Then they kill the homeowners as their 5 yr old runs off with the baby. End of movie. A heaping pile of suck.

Grossly Underrated

[acarltoncooke · 8/10 · 11 December 2018]

This movie does more through what it does not show or tell than many movies do through spoonfeeding and gratuitous FX. I especially enjoyed how the film teased you with the promise of a "reveal" then withheld it and let the viewer try to understand what was "caught." This film is for those who like to use their imaginations. A "lo-if" film reminiscent of The Invitation or The Sound of Your Voice.

Creep Factor 10+

[joeldodd · 7/10 · 22 April 2018]

If you want a movie that explains everything explicitly, this is not for you. The plot takes you through the course of a single day that, for the English couple, gets progressively worse. There are many metaphors at work here, but Cian Barry and April Pearson take creepiness to new heights - whether it is his turn as Bryan Ferry's psycho idiot brother or Pearson's disintegrating zombie - and their naivety about the human world is at odds with what we expect. This is seen in Crow and Sumner's 1972 vintage couple, who frame the events and their visitors in the context of what real people, in the real world would expect. They do not confuse a fictional world of zombies and alien invasions with reality so, if you are used to seeing movie characters default to "aliens, of course!" or "Zombies, what was I thinking?" then this is not for you. You are expected to do some thinking and speculation of your own.

Reasonable concept poorly executed.

[mjsreg · 1/10 · 6 April 2018]

There seem to be a lot of younger 'producers' and 'directors' who seem to fail because of a fundamental lack of awareness of the final goal - to produce a good film that engages the audience and tells an interesting story.

This film seems like the people who made it forgot to take their vision out of their heads (if it were there in the first place) and put it on film for the audience to see.

I got the impression that this was a poor attempt to replicate a '70s look' - like classic thrillers and horrors of the era. It doesn't work. It may have worked if more thought had gone into it and the story was set in the present day with a 70s style. That would have been interesting.

Then there is the story. The end is obvious from the beginning, it is just a matter of how the story is going to get there. Not much mystery and certainly no horror.

The cast put effort into their performances, which were generally good, but have been woefully let down by poor production and direction.

Who thinks of movies like this. SMH

[Hotepsekhemwy · 1/10 · 20 February 2019]

This movie gave me a headache. Trying to understand the nonsense baby language is driving me crazy. The purpose of the woman character is uncertain. The husband character is weak. The wife seems to have some sense of urgency to understand the new visitors.

do not be deterred by ratings or comments

[deadbull-95171 · 7 August 2020]

As with most vastly used web media, most votes are cast by inexperienced uneducated, immature, "millennials" etc. Comments here are usually somewhat thoughtful, because most of us are film-freaks and do have some good insight. At least here, with few exceptions, the movie is mainly panned, essentially for it's very deliberate lack of spoon-feeding resolutions. A common remark is that the ending itself still resolves nothing, or creates the greatest ambiguity. For me, the ending was the absolute confirmation of what I feel was CONSTANTLY suggested the entire movie. Further, the inferences were so strong, that they (to me) quickly became givens. Further, it is told largely "POV" frm the oppressed couples view....where they are being forced into concluding the unbelievable and confusing...... Well, I was a good poker player, and i got good at "reading hands" and while you always have to be somewhat flexible even when things are pretty obvious, once certain situations reach a point, it would be silly to change your mind. At the moment I'm wondering if I should really "spoil" the movie and spell it out to you as I would to a brain damaged child....naw, I won't. It is so obvious what the 2 strangers are, that it was anything but directorial ineptitude. It was a film-makers clear decision to make the movie more interesting by withholding some of the narration more typical in most movies. You have to pay attention. What many reviewers see as endless repetition is a gradual affirmation and heightening of how what should already be patently obvious may play out. What is referred to as the movies crescendo of vagueness....when the children escape into the field and the "buzzing" gets louder......jeez.....what more would you like? Comments like..."is she calling them now?" and so many other "semi-organic mutations" bursting through the strangers, who threaten to "reveal" themselves.....Everything; we are being clobbered over the head with what is going on. Like a horror movie, where much gore is suppressed and suggested ..like Psycho...(a bathtub drain etc) .usually and wrongly considered the greatest of all horror movies, almost all gore is inferred. Tony Perkins famous twisted look at the concluding seconds of the movie is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to an audience 2 decades away from a surgeon's desensitization. Part of the problem is that, since most commentators, or viewers I should say, are very young , they are raised on special effects and bang-bang movies,,,and do NEED to be spoon fed everything because they really do not know how to think and are socially inept. I grew up before computers and calculators and cell phones. Einstein himself did his final notes on relativity on a couple sheets of a legal pad of paper. We are living in Idiocracy. The directors and actors are't stupid, the viewers definitely are. The parts left unclear are not critical to anything. The ULTIMATE fate of the kids is not in the least what this movie is about. Slaughter, abduction....the tabloids and popular social delusions have furnished a very adequate background to pick one of the few obvious choices....that road simply does not need to be GPSed out. Same with an architectural diagram of the strangers intentions.......even in a documentary....where we have entire courtroom transcripts etc...and there is no confusion at all about who did what.....the WHY of it is NEVER fully explained because it can't be. A lot of you go to the most ridiculous fiction of all time....the bible....the least historically accurate document of our planet...and it is is referred to as the gospel. Mystery is at the epicenter of the most obvious acts...by nature.......birth and death are pretty clear...can you really explain them? Can you really explain DNA or how a blade of grass grows? This is NOT a GREAT movie. it is an above average, well acted, interesting movie that flickers back and forth between sci-fi and horror....it does use some cliched tricks of tension building....AGAIN....it is told largely "POV" frm the oppressed couples view....where they are being forced into concluding the unbelievable and confusing...... And their eyes are the camera we are looking through, with their astonishment and horror. The more I force myself to describe it, the more I see the quality and merit of this interesting unique very cleverly told tale. i would say thumbs up, except as a student of history I know that gesture mean't death. Thumbs down mean't to spare a life. So, I'll end here (did anyone actually read this novelette?) with a definite ...check it out.....and a reminder to forget most opinions until you form your OWN!

Self Pretention At It's Best

[TRussellMorris · 4/10 · 15 April 2021]

I'm all for imagination, and a bit of ambiguity, I love movies that range over the scale of ambiguity within acceptable "egghead cinema buff" limits. We can be tedious in our superiority complex I know. I've had a lot of fun digesting the 1000's of movies over a lifetime required to gain that title AND the patience and tolerance for that range of cinema orphans many of us hold dear in our collections. Be it B-Movie or Low Budget tolerance and being able to see the treasure in the cheaper box, or be it the high toned ambiguity of movies that range the gambit of Agnes Of God or Under The Skin, or such other movies where not everything is explained to a finite conclusion BUT, there is a limit, I don't mind being asked to interpret that surrealistic painting for my own vision of what it is, and accepting the different view of another viewer, but when both of us are standing before a canvas with 2 red dots spaced 8 inches apart and a yellow dot in the left corner and asked to tell the artist what they see....well. I could do that at home and you've brought nothing worth my time to this conversation if you know what I mean.

This movie is that canvas, a beautiful atmospheric canvas, with some red dot characters and a premise that falls short of providing enough information to interpret. There's a word that comes to mind, PRETENTIOUS, near insultingly so. If I could say one thing to the director's face, it would be, you think WAY too much of yourself and what you THINK is a clever display of your "high brow" intellect, is actually but an expose of your own shortcomings. You can come up with a premise, intriguing and even capable of holding one's attention, but lack the COMPLETE vision and ability to follow through.

This movie, unlike the MANY who play with ambiguity and intrigue, that satisfy and delight while still leaving things open to interpretation, this is a real big gun with the wrong ammo, and the misfire is a big as said gun. The ART of those kinds of films is their ability to give you enough puzzle pieces to form a picture, even if those pieces are shaped in a way that different viewers can put together different pictures in the end. Let use Agnes Of God as a prime example, was it a virgin conception?, WAS it God, Was it Stigmata, was it a field hand, what was that song she sang at the end? MY answer may be different than yours BUT the pieces of that mystery are ALL there for ALL of those answers to be possibly correct and legit explained as such. I cannot tell you anything but PURE conjecture about this movie though, there is NOTHING to back up what I just randomly decide, and put forth as "the answers". It honestly is the only movie I've ever seen out of 1000s that I legit can say, "Well, I will just say it was this" but I have ZERO legit points in the film to back that up aside from just my own conjecture that this is what this thing meant. It was beyond disappointing considering the acting, cinematography, atmosphere, and premise.. I don't think I've ever seen such a waste of all those things to end with nothing but 2 hours of wasted time (90 minutes to watch it, and 30 minutes to sit and wonder why in the world they would embarrass themselves intentionally that way in their own self-delusion that they were being high brow and "Artsy". It just really made them (Director, screenwriter, producer) look silly. Watch this ONLY if you wish to see (For some reason) the perfect way to both ruin a potential masterpiece and embarrass yourself with misguided pretention at the same time.

I should've read the reviews first... save yourself

[Rickard-606-592716 · 2/10 · 24 July 2018]

Look, I get the whole idea of a film that doesn't spell out every detail for the audience. I have thoroughly enjoyed such films in the past. I did not enjoy this. The sad thing is, I saw a preview for this movie some time back, and have been trying to recall the title for months, because I really thought it looked like a great movie. By some conincidence, I was thinking about it again this evening when suddenly my desire was made manifest, and an ad for the film-- on a no-charge streaming channel!--suddenly appeared on my television. The fact that it was nearly 1am didn't stop me from watching immediately, even though it wasn't likely that the film would vanish overnight. If I had waited, and the film had vanished, I would be well-rested and not annoyed by having wasted my night's rest on a half-baked, unresolved and ultimately frustrating movie experience.

It's a beautifully filmed movie with a lot of fascinating moments, but ultimately I felt as if I'd overheard an interesting snippet of conversation before moving out of earshot -- never to know how it began or ended, and ultimately, not caring much.

Yes, the acting is quite good. Yes, the movie has some thoroughly creepy moments. But it was in no way satisfying for me. I also didn't at all understand the motivation of those who sent "Mr and Mrs Blair" to the house. If the .. er ... aliens? Mutants? Other-Dimensional-Beings? knew they'd been photographed, and for whatever reason this was a huge problem for them (maybe they shouldn't hang out around inhabited sites with a military presence?) why didn't they just scrabble and lurch over to the copulating couple, vomit and spit on them a few times (eventually giving up on the venomous saliva idea), bashing in their heads with a convenient rock and then scuttling away with the camera?

Why send heavily disguised agents to spit on, torment, scream at, show flashes of near-understanding that humanity could be a beautiful thing, hint at a hive mind, puzzle over voice recorders and music players (but they understand cameras? and can put together perfectly lovely (albeit short-lived) human skinsuits?) wait patiently for photos to be developed in order to see the one that proved their existence or whatever it proved (we never get to see it, another fun chance for YOU to use YOUR imagination)... and yet they seem incapable of understanding or even having an awareness of human military, human journalists (or hobby photography), journalism, babies, families, and never do understand that drooling thick gray saliva onto someone is not ever going to do what you're clearly hoping it's going to do, so you may as well give up and grab a rock.

May I say that my one moment of startled, unrestrained laughter was when we saw the small boy fleeing for his life with his baby sister in his arms? There is a young man who does not understand the concept of "run" in any way.

Not sure why I wrote this review. I guess so I could vent a bit of spleen, since I'll now work to forget I saw this after trying to remember it for these many months. Oh, and perhaps to push some version of me into making better choices for his or her evening.

What a letdown

[casey-42712 · 3/10 · 21 March 2020]

I love sci fi and monster movies. I don't know what I just watched. Plodding, slow, pointless, far too long.

No slow burn, no thriller, stilted, obtuse, and disappointing.

Don't waste your time, I did it for you!

Slow AF

[davidhartley92 · 5/10 · 3 December 2018]

Not recommended for those without an abundance of patients. Although it's a good slow burn thriller, so little is explained by the ending that it may leave America viewers (like me) very frustrated.

I Kinda Liked It...

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 6/10 · 7 February 2021]

This was an interesting story to me. For an English horror movie, not bad at all. And the ending, was not what I expected at all.

6/10

Really don't bother

[andyaj31 · 1/10 · 14 September 2018]

Not many things would be worse than the alien dude and his Melania Trump like wife coming to your house. I really felt like cutting my arm off and hitting myself repeatedly with the soggy end until I was unconscious

I just wish that I could get the last 90 minutes back so I could see a good film.

For those who don't want everything spelled out

[interplanetaryspy-163-443189 · 9/10 · 16 October 2018]

This movie is getting a lot of flack for what seems to be viewer laziness. You will not find any voiceover guiding you through the story, or a character showing up at the door in the final minutes to sort everything out. This movie requires the viewer to put the pieces together, and the pieces are definitely there. It is not hard to follow if you're listening, and having one of the "visitors" explain themselves in detail would have been a major letdown, since they make it clear repeatedly that the scope of their knowledge is limited. This is a disturbing film that trusts that the viewer is capable of sorting things out on their own. Much like Under The Skin or Hereditary, there is some ambiguity and I wish more films would require viewer intelligence as part of the experience.

A disturbing little sci-fi/horror that depends on viewer imagination

[payday-20919 · 7/10 · 11 December 2022]

I don't really get the low reviews that this movie seems to be getting, it's a nice, disturbing little independent sci-fi/horror gem that trusts the audience to read between the lines and supply their own explanations and visuals for things that happen off-screen.

Sure, viewers who need to have things spoon-fed to them will find this frustrating, and I can imagine this movie's test screenings must have been a riot, but there are surely more viewers out there than this who don't mind letting their imaginations fill in the blanks? Or maybe not.

The story itself is fairly straightforward and doesn't do anything particularly complicated or avant-garde: a generally likeable family of journalists in a charming rural English home find more than they bargained for when unusual military activity on a nearby moor attract their attention, and in turn brings them to the attention of a pair of mysterious visitors, "Mr. And Mrs. Blair", who have obviously taken their names from a shop down the road, and struggle with normal day-to-day concepts and human interaction, and become increasingly more menacing as their interview runs on and devolves into a violent hostage situation.

These visitors, though dressed in white, are pretty clearly drawn from a UFO "men in black" template, and what they want is something they think the family has accidentally "caught" on camera while visiting the moor, though much of the conflict between the characters runs on a sort of language gap between the visitors and their victims, and the plot twists from there. The basic idea is pretty easy to follow, with the gist of the visitors' presumed role and motive in the movie explained pretty directly to one of the children by making a comparison to a school bully: "bad people did something wrong, and are afraid of getting caught."

Where some viewers are going to struggle is that where most movies will spell everything out by showing off the offending photograph or showing a flashback scene of what happened when the trouble was "caught", this movie chooses instead to just leave it to imagination, and really the precise nature of what was "caught" isn't really important - it's simply the "McGuffin' that brings the unsettling visitors into contact with our unfortunate family, and sets the movie's nightmare logic hostage situation in motion.

Over all, the movie for me got a lot of mileage out of its low budget: a fairly small set (maybe three or four rooms and an outdoor location or two, a fairly small cast, no CGI effects and a practical effects budget that is limited to some nicely-done but fairly no-frills makeup effects.

The movie's strongest point for me was the acting and storytelling, which supported the movie's suspense and horror really well - "Mrs. Blair" in particular manages to conjure more scares from a few unearthly sounds, strange poses, terrifying expressions, and weird outbursts of violence than most bigger-budget movies of this sort achieve with a huge special effects budget and actual monster effects; "Caught" resembles a typical exorcism movie in that respect, and gives many better exorcism films a good run for their money on the results. The lighting and camera angles also help enhance the off-kilter, nightmarish effect of the story - the results are pretty impressive, considering that the entire movie takes place in broad daylight in mostly well-lit interiors and an occasional exterior scene.

If I could point at a weak spot, it would be the ambient and incidental music: when the music works, it builds effective tension, and one scene in which an unearthly opera is played in-universe on a cassette player through a disturbing scene was especially notable for hitting its target, at least for me. However, the soundtrack was otherwise a bit too loud and obvious, failing to let the movie's unearthly and horrible situations speak for themselves... some of the best horror soundtracks run on on much more restrained and subtle and eerie stuff!

If fans of low-budget sci-fi horror are willing to forgive the movie those flaws - an overbearing soundtrack and a couple mysteries whose solutions are left to our imagination, and perhaps a slow-burn pacing that leads to an inevitable tut abrupt ending - then this movie could be an underappreciated gem of weird horror. The movie might otherwise lose gore-hounds, high-octane jump-scare addicts, and viewers who need every mystery tied up for them in a nice, obvious bow bypassing viewer imagination to be enjoyable.

Lazy writing spoils good effort by cast.

[kingslandbungalow · 1/10 · 3 April 2018]

This is one of those movies where there is an over-arching question that runs throughout the entire film. The viewer might reasonably believe that there will be an answer/reveal/payoff at some point, because otherwise what's the point of watching? Well, there is no payoff! The writers could have brought some satisfaction to the audience by having a token explanation, even a lazy half-baked one would be better than nothing at all. I can't imagine how the pitch for this movie was green-lighted: "Hey, we have an idea where this spooky couple go into someone's house." "And?" "Uh, that's it...." Save yourself the hour and a half, this is a badly, badly written movie that ultimately has no point whatsoever.

Hate these no-end endings

[moongold7 · 1 April 2018]

I don't think the film was useless, and I disagree it didn't provide what many horror films fail to deliver. The acting from the demonic female was particularly convincing. As to being depressing, well, isn't that what most horror movies cause anyway? I think it was well done, but as I say, I hate movies that leave the ending unresolved and not finalised. What happened to the boy and his baby sister?

Don't Get Caught By This Misleading Drab Nothingness!

[silicontourist · 1/10 · 11 April 2021]

The two parents open the film and their acting is good but after that, the film just fails in every department!

You have no idea why the home owners let in two clearly odd acting strangers, who blatantly appeared to have very definite mental health issues...FAIL!

You have no idea as to why its billed as a horror and sci-fi film; because it most certainly is not in either of those two categories...FAIL You have no idea who, or what, the protagonists are or want etc...FAIL!

You have no idea why the army is set up in a field somewhere...FAIL!

You have no idea if the Mr and Mrs Blair couple are escaped lunatics...FAIL!

You have no idea why you are having to try and solve a home invasion event that is trying to be a scary psychological thriller; which it is certainly not...FAIL!

You have no idea, when you have reached the end, as to why there is no middle or all is revealed ending and, no explanation for anything you just watched...FAIL!

You only know who the baby, the son and the parents (2 journalists ) are.

You only know that you just wasted 1h:25m:24s of your life and you are feeling angry/irate/infuriated. I can only truly describe this digital drudge in the way of the fairy tale story (see below) that isn't... Once upon a time...and they all lived happily ever after".

Nothing telling you in what time and who were those who lived happily?