This is Egoyan’s best film for a very long time: like Reynolds, he needed a hit, and The Captive is a welcome return to the form of The Sweet Hereafter. Its eeriness creeps up on you and taps you on the shoulder, and when you spin around, it’s still behind you.

A lazily plotted and largely generic thriller.

Without a thin tether to credibility, this fussy, morbid fantasy simply slides off into the void.

Not exciting enough to be taken as straightforward thriller and not engaging enough for a dramatic character piece, Egoyan's The Captive is held back by its own lame script and a distinct lack of necessity.

Beneath the well-tuned atmospherics lurks a schlocky, fairly ludicrous and pretty distasteful yarn that ultimately puts the stress in all the wrong places.