Prisoners (2013 film)

In Pennsylvania, Keller Dover, his wife Grace, son Ralph, and daughter Anna celebrate Thanksgiving with their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch, and their daughters Eliza and Joy. The four children go for a walk, and Anna and Joy play on a parked RV. After dinner, the two go missing. Detective Loki responds to a police call that an RV matching the description is at the edge of the woods, and arrests the man inside, Alex Jones.

During interrogation, Loki realizes Alex's diminished IQ prevents him from planning a kidnapping and learns that his RV contains no forensic evidence of the missing girls. Loki runs down leads on local pedophiles and finds a corpse in the house of Father Patrick Dunn. Dunn admits to killing the man after he confessed to murdering 16 children for his "war on God".

The police captain releases Alex to his aunt, Holly. Convinced of Alex's guilt, Keller assaults him outside the police station, where Alex whispers to him, "They didn't cry until I left them." After Loki finds no proof of this, Keller kidnaps Alex. Along with a very reluctant Franklin, Keller begins to torture Alex in an empty building Keller owns.

At a vigil for the girls, Loki approaches a suspicious man who flees. Loki releases a sketch of him to the community. The suspect sneaks into the Birch and Keller houses. Grace hears him and calls Loki, who learns while responding that Keller spends his nights away from home. He tails Keller to the empty building, where Keller claims he goes to drink, but Loki doesn't find Alex. Loki tracks down the suspect, Bob Taylor, at his house. The walls are covered in maze drawings and Loki opens crates filled with snakes and bloody children's clothes.

Loki shows the Birch parents and Keller photos of the bloody clothes, and they identify several as Joy's and Anna's. Later Keller tells his son that they aren't dead. As Taylor draws detailed mazes, Loki assaults him and demands the location of the girls. Taylor grabs an officer's gun and kills himself.

Keller continues torturing Alex, who cryptically talks about escaping from a maze. Keller visits Holly, learning that Alex's speech disability comes from a childhood accident involving the pet snakes her husband kept. While devoutly religious, Holly and her husband lost their faith after their son died of cancer, and adopted Alex as a way to cope.

Loki matches the maze pattern in Taylor's drawings to a necklace worn by the corpse in Dunn's house. At Taylor's house, Loki learns that many of the bloody clothes were store-bought and soaked with pig blood. Below a window outside the Dover house, Loki finds Taylor's footprints and a sock matching that from Taylor's house, which Keller had earlier identified as Anna's.

When the drugged Anna and Joy attempt an escape, Anna is caught while Joy gets away. Joy is found and hospitalized. When Keller grills a woozy Joy for information, she remembers little, but tells him, "You were there." He rushes out, realizing where Anna's being kept. Loki gives chase and travels to Keller's building expecting to find him, but instead finds Alex.

Keller goes to Holly's to find Anna, but she gains the upper hand and pulls a gun. She explains that before her husband disappeared, they abducted children as part of their war on God to avenge their son's death, and to create demons out of the traumatized parents. Alex was their first abduction, Taylor their second. Holly drugs Keller at gunpoint and imprisons him in a hidden pit in her yard, where he finds his daughter's whistle.

While Holly's out of sight, Loki enters Holly's house to inform her Alex has been found. He sees a photo of Holly's late husband and notices he's wearing the same maze necklace as the corpse in Dunn's basement, and that it's the same design Taylor had drawn in his house. Loki searches for Holly and finds her giving Anna a lethal injection. The two exchange gunfire that leaves leaving Holly dead and Loki injured. He races Anna to the hospital, barely making it in time.

A recuperating Anna and Joy visit a bandaged Loki in his hospital room to thank him. Loki returns to Holly's house contemplating the events and Keller's location, where he faintly hears a whistle blowing.

Aaron Guzikowski wrote the script based on a short story he wrote, partially inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", involving "a father whose kid was struck by a hit and run driver and then puts this guy in a well in his backyard".[4] After he wrote the spec, many actors and directors entered and exited the project, including actors Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio and directors Antoine Fuqua and Bryan Singer.[4] Ultimately Guzikowski would credit producer Mark Wahlberg for getting the project on its feet, stating, "He was totally pivotal in getting the film made. That endorsement helped it get around."[4] Principal photography began in Georgia in February 2013.[5]

The Prisoners soundtrack, composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson, was released on September 20, 2013.[21]

• The Secret in Their Eyes (2009), an Argentine-Spanish film which includes a theme of suspect kidnapping.
• Secret in Their Eyes (2015), an American remake of The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Prisoners (2013 film).

• Official website
• Prisoners at IMDb
• Prisoners at AllMovie
• Prisoners at Rotten Tomatoes
• Prisoners at Box Office Mojo
• Prisoners at Metacritic