Mark Farnsworth is currently reviewing selected films from the London Film Festival.
The camera is low, prowling and probing through a car park kicked on by the jittery score. A van is jimmied and taken by two men, one older Vic, one younger Danny, both purposeful, driven. Next, they are in a builders merchants grabbing saws, cord, dills and soundproofing. They could be on “60 Minute Makeover, ” but somehow, we know different.
Now the industrious pair strip old g-plan furniture from a deserted house before soundproofing a room and breaking for lunch – probably too early, like any other builders. But they’re no cowboys, these two. A hole is dug in the woods; a bed is purchased and fixed to the floor before locks are added to the room. Who would live in a kidnap boutique like this?
The answer is rich girl Alice. She’s bundled into her new des-res kicking and screaming. We glimpse flashes of her life from the clothes she wears: Vivienne Westwood earrings, electric blue heels and designer tattoos. She’s handcuffed to the bed, gagged and stripped naked. Her tormentors take torture porn shots, but that’s not the deal here. They soon dress her in the latest abduction chic – a blue velour tracksuit. Surely the girl has already suffered enough?
First time writer/director J Blakeson nails his bloody colours to the bedpost in his airtight “The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.” After his dazzling opening montage, Blakeson slams the door firmly shut on his three sided cast. His use of lemon sharp widescreen interiors allows his top-notch actors to explore every nook and cranny of their limited space.
Eddy Marsan’s podgy-faced professional Vic and Martin Compston’s Steerpike Danny are both excellent, but it is Gemma Arterton’s captured Alice that shakes the audience by the throat. Panda-eyed, she shouts, screams, pleads and begs her way through the film. When she’s not scared enough on her ransom video, Vic, acting as director, orders Danny to, “Give her some motivation.” You can imagine the rest.
Blakeson’s self-imposed rules of a limited cast and location keep his thriller taut, tight and terrifying. “The Disappearance Of Alice Creed” echoes movies like “Deathtrap, “Sleuth” and “Dead Calm” thankfully avoiding the tourist trap of films like “Hostel” and its ilk. Like Hitchcock, it remains “purely sinister” up to its menacing end credits. From these, we even get the idea that the real movie might just be developing off-screen.