This is a really excellent film, a real psychological horror, no gore but you get the idea and have to use your imagination, and the performances are superb...the twist is brilliant, totally caught me off guard, jaw to the floor! But then again, I have watched Surveillance so should have expected something...if you haven't do!

'Chained' starts out pretty good, but soon after things things get boring, with only here and there a good bit. The story of Bob and his background is rather standard and the interactions between him and his new protégé are none too impressive. Until... director Jennifer Chambers Lynch decides to take things up a few notches near the end. Too bad she couldn't leave it at that, and the film takes another turn - one too many. If she had begun that first change earlier, then the other change might have worked out as well.I'm a fan Vincent D'Onofrio in lots of other films and the series 'Criminal intent', and he wasn't bad here, but the voice he does is something he doesn't at all. Eamon Farren is no acting revelation, which leaves us with the female victims, who do their jobs sufficiently.A small 5 out of 10.

Lynch tried here to do something bolder than anything you'll find on the horror shelf these days so on that count I applaud. Chilling as the title implies, but with a sensitivity and desire to immerse the viewer in illusion rather than merely jolt. I like the effort.A boy goes with his mother to the movies on a sunny afternoon, entering the place of illusion. They watch a grisly horror movie his dad told him not to. They come out on the other end ('in one ear and out the window') to be whisked to a remote house where real horror now is going to take place. The place is marvelously Lynch-esque, a bland suburban one-story house in the middle of flat fields that drown the screams.This is all inside the mind where the horrific impulse first grows. The erosion of self as being chained to a wall and having to serve a surrogate father who thinks people are merely pieces to rearrange. The familiarity chills, how inside the horror the boy must still have a life, so that an offering of a candybar that he can eat in front of the TV challenges our own grip next to the boy's.And then shift again to real life so that when captor and victim go out for their first spree together, the real night they and we encounter hums with all that was lost for the boy and all that still awaits, a teenager who could be doing teen stuff that night. (can he still? is it too late for that life?)Some potent stuff here. But there's a last minute twist that completely ruins it. Lynch simply isn't her father. The twist makes perfect symbolic sense if you go back to the start, it's planted to be that way and deliberately sustained by the author; a father who hides something horrible from the child. But it makes no sense as life. This is what Lynch Sr. has been working towards his whole career, more and more fluid slips to and from illusion, because it's all the same desiring mind whether awake or not. Here Jennifer yanks us by the arm. It's still more imaginative than most horror these days so you might wanna stop by one day.

The movie is intended to present a horrific topic in a palatable and informative manner. It's very difficult to illustrate such an aberrant and violent side of inhumanity without getting soiled. That being said, the writer did an amazing job of focusing more on the topic than the gore that such acts would present in reality. I also agree that the gender of the writer has no bearing on the execution or content of the movie. Films, books, art give us a glimpse of what is going on in our society ( subversive or overt), that we may not necessarily be aware is happening around us or even in a more remote area. It also provokes thought and discussion, and hopefully (at some point) remediation if the topic merits such. I give the writer a thumbs up. I also think the actors did an excellent job at portraying prime evil juxtaposed by innocence (the son). The ending? Well that caught me by surprise. It was a good twist.