Jesse Metcalfe and Erika Christensen in The Tortured
Jesse Metcalfe and Erika Christensen in The Tortured
  • Film

The Tortured

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Time Out says

Decades late to its sleepover at The Last House on the Left, this awkward revenge fantasy—about two bereaved parents who kidnap their child’s murderer—presents a grade-school-level ethics lesson like some kind of profundity: Are we becoming just as evil as this piece of life-ruining trash? Don’t let the better-than-average cast (especially Traffic’s Erika Christensen) fool you. The flick gets off on surgical slicings and an overall Fincheresque gloominess, the latter becoming an unwitting joke (“The electric bill is late,” one character offers offhandedly). A last-minute twist implicating the audience in the bloodlust isn’t clever so much as hypocritical.

Follow Joshua Rothkopf on Twitter: @joshrothkopf

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