Prisoners (2013)
Despite the harrowing premise, this didn’t have the greatest pull on me at first, but it gradually hooked me and another case of ending up watching the whole thing, even though I started the film quite late and planned to watch it over two nights. Villeneuve knows what he does here and clearly puts his skill from making <a href=”https://letterboxd.com/jwldk/film/incendies/>Incendies</a> to even greater heights. It is a perfect study in how to do proper setup and payoff, where things all fall into place with a pretty cool puzzle type of twisty narrative. What I like about it is that is not the super mega twist from the like of Nolan or Shyamalan. Everything is in plain sight and you don’t feel cheated with late reveals. A lot of that comes down to proper editing, where scenes stop earlier than you expect to, not showing everything but enough to keep the hook.
Rating: 4