Chained

Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s obliquely savage horror movie presents an unusual vision of the banal, gruesome home life of a serial killer – as seen through the eyes of an enslaved nine-year-old boy, who cleans up his mess and eats his leftovers. Ten years later, the now teenage Rabbit (Eamon Farren) is offered his first taste of a woman, as sadistic taxi driver Bob (Vincent D’Onofrio) grooms him to be his protégé. Keeping the slaughter mostly off-screen, writer-director Lynch (daughter of David) zooms in on the moral question of nature and nurture: has Rabbit become like his mentor? Or has a spark of empathy survived? Trapped inside the killer’s claustrophobic bungalow, Rabbit, like the audience, is forced to share the killer’s hermetically sealed mindset: ‘This is your world. From now on, there is only you, me and them.’ Lynch presents an uncomfortable, unflinching view of depraved humanity, but ‘Chained’ lacks the rigour and insight of ‘Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’. Also, the rushed and ridiculous ‘twist’ ending is even less plausible than the clichéd, explanatory flashbacks to Bob’s own abusive childhood.