The tense thriller that put its director on the map...

| Sep 29, 2023

While the resolution is close to being predictable... the movie's strong suit is something else. The process, the content, and the journey are profoundly immersive. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 7, 2022

“Prisoners” offers some slick foreboding, crafty twists, and a satisfying ending.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

An absorbing, skillfully made drama.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 22, 2022

Filmed like a horror film, and with a mood to match, Prisoners is haunting and will stick with you.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2021

Despite a kidnapping premise that has the strength and suspense to pull viewers in, the running time offers a drastic disservice.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 4, 2020

There is a level of bleakness to Villeneuve's film that one usually only sees in the film cultures of Japan and South Korea - a willingness to take a narrative one step further than its audience might be comfortable taking.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Oct 8, 2020

The film's real powerhouse performance may very well come from Jake Gyllenhaal.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 20, 2020

"Prisoners" is a mystery that is as physically and emotionally pulverizing to you the viewer as it is to the characters.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 8, 2020

Prisoners is a dark, tense and brutal movie.

| Jul 7, 2020

'Prisoners' is an absorbing thriller that knows how to channel the emotional energy of its characters once they are cornered by the heartbreaking narrative maze that it possesses. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 25, 2020

This gripping rust-belt thriller has us fear for the fates of a trio of besieged souls...

| Jun 19, 2020

A superior thriller, made with real intelligence and raw feeling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 31, 2020

Villeneuve's direction saves Prisoners from falling into Alex Cross drivel. Like in Incendies, he knows how to keep a story moving and make us long for the truth.

| Original Score: 3.6/5 | Nov 20, 2019

Stuffed to the gills with child abduction, overmedicated depression and familial implosions, director Denis Villeneuve's bloated whodunit is a puppy suicide away from the most joyless way to spend well over two hours.

| Original Score: B | Aug 27, 2019

Occasionally I got lost in the labyrinthine plot twists, but at almost two-and-a-half hours there's not an ounce of fat on its gripping narrative.

| Aug 7, 2019

Gyllenhaal begins and ends with the same dogged determination, the same pessimism and thinly veiled anger, and the same moral center. Kudos to him, as the actor must build character subtext out of scant scripted development.

| Jul 31, 2019

Prisoners can be quite good when it chooses to be a regular thriller. Unfortunately it decides to try for more, and comes up short in doing so.

| Original Score: 6.5/10 | Jun 22, 2019

A slow burning powder keg of mystery and emotion that winds up the audience and never lets it go.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 9, 2019

For all its bells and whistles, Prisoners feels more like a middle-of-the-road episode of "Law and Order" than a film that wants to be a mystery wrapped in a moral dilemma.

| Apr 9, 2019