About Angela Wilson
Location: Midwest
Occupation: Web Producer/Freelance Writer
Bio: I love to read - and write - and surf. My FAV genres include mysteries, romantic suspense and thrillers. I'm finally working on my own thriller (under a pen name) and writing a book on marketing/PR for authors. I blog about writing at www.wickedwordsmith.com, and have accounts on various sites. You can find me on MySpace, Facebook and more by visiting www.angelawilson.net.
Posts: 282
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This so-so Japanese flick about a sadistic postal worker who kidnaps women for a little BDSM fun lacks suspense or creativity. Criminal Minds and SVU offer up better plot lines than this.
Sagawa, a postal worker, stalks women by looking through their mail and taking Polaroids of the interesting things they receive. Eventually, he finds something intriguing in a young university student’s mail. He decides it’s time to take a pet. He stalks her, captures her, then holes her up in his apartment, which he soundproofed with egg cartons.
She hates him from the start. He tries to entice her, but she doesn’t cooperate. He decides to try a little story telling exercise, where she is to write about him as a hero and her as his hero’s mate. This subtle form of brainwashing works in Sagawa’s favor. The girl eventually stops fighting him, and begins to find herself attracted to him in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way. They get it on at the beach, after his failed attempt to kill them both. (You get a lot of noisy sex after that point. I was beginning to think the movie had morphed into really bad porn. Wait, is that an oxymoron?) Sagawa meets the downstairs neighbor, who threatens to expose his dirty little secret.
But that’s not all. Once Magoka falls into his clutches, Sagawa gives her a key – and she splits while he’s at work. She’d been with him 589 days when the cops come to get him – and was simply playing the Good Pet Sagawa always craved until she finally found a way out.
I normally don’t give spoilers, but this 105-minute flick is not worth your time. Don’t let the cover copy fool you; it lacks any psychological depth and suspense to make it the “thrilling criminal-drama” promised by marketing team. On more than one occasion, I found myself desperate to forward through scenes to get to the end. Sagawa’s character was lukewarm; he needed to be either more sadistic or more loving, but not the mix offered here. The music sucked, but at least the subtitles worked. I will admit, Sagawa’s monologue while talking to his defense attorney offered up a little creep factor for stalker fans. And I did like the end from Magoka’s POV. I wish we could have had a bit more of this throughout.
Captive Files I is a waste of money and time. If you want better fare, check out Prime Time crime standards for something that will actually hold your interest.
