We begin with a man in what appears to be either a park or wooded area, with obvious signs of having been kidnapped, struggling his way to a road where he is struck by a vehicle. Not badly injured, he asked the driver to call his home where his daughter answers and lets him know her mother has been shot. From there we shift situations to a new family moving into a nice house. During this time we witness the mother and daughter having a disagreement about the daughter wanting to go out for a party whilst the mother wants to have a family supper and movie night for their first night in the home. We see dad tell the daughter she can go out and that leads to the mother confronting the dad because she had told the daughter to stay in. This is when all hell breaks loose. I can't say more without spoiling it. At times, this movie is brutal, bloody and gory. I saw a few bad ratings but I enjoyed it. I thought it was gripping and well acted. Glad I ran across it.

To fully understand how realistic this movie is one would have to understand the radical change of home assaults in Spain during recent years.Ex-combatants from Eastern Europe and beyond have recently found themselves out of job and out of borders in the EU, so many of them have recycled themselves into well-trained, ruthless, and well organized criminals, the type that Europe is not truly prepared for.If someone enters into someone's home in the US, chances are the intruder may be received with a legally owned gun and the right to shoot and kill that person. Unfortunately for Europeans, gun ownership is generally not that easily allowed, and confronting a criminal may cost the victim in court if you happen to hurt the "poor" criminal.To make matters even worst, Europeans are used to quiet thefts, the ones that steal your stuff when you are not home. You may cry for your stolen TV, but not for your personal safety.So when military-trained criminals, used to brutality and violence, come to one's house, there is little one can do......or isn't there?Here is where we find this excellent movie, if by excellent we mean "plausible". Do not expect dramatic performances nor John Wayne coming in his horse via the living room. However, expect human emotions and human actions.I do not give 10 points because I have notice a certain inconsistency in the criminal side of the plot that makes the movie less believable without any reason other than trying to stick to what almost every single movie on this genre does. Worse still, it does not affect the outcome of the movie, so I do not understand why it was necessary to attempt to modify the realistic formula that works so well in the rest of the movie.However, if you are willing to forgive that slip, you will be rewarded with an incredibly realistic portrait of the drama that many Spanish families suffered and are still suffering today.One tip: If you are going to watch this movie, get your reading glasses and opt for the original Spanish version with English subtitles (which, by the way, is something that you should do whenever you watch any movie at all).

I watched this just after seeing another Home Invasion Movie, Mothers Day (2010). Kidnapped, 2010, disappointed me. Although this was a Spanish film, it is very similar to all those Home Invasion films that has been produced by Hollywood during the last few decades! Family moves into new home. Mom and daughter fights. Suddenly all hell breaks lose and thugs ambush the family of three. Daddy is sent with the one thug to clean out their bank accounts, at the ATM. Mom and daughter stays at home and get tortured and raped while trying to escape. A friend of the daughter comes to visit and gets beaten up. A neighbourhood watchman gets slaughtered.The girl kills the rapist. The other thug flees. Husband rolls the car, injuring the remaining thug. He rescues the family and calls the cops.. Then the remaining thug kills them all.Although the acting and cinematography is rather good (the mom was quite brilliant), this film is highly overrated. I watched it on recommendation from various lists. I usually prefer the foreign versions of thriller/horror themes, but this one seems to be worse than the typical Hollywood kidnap/hostage/home invasion drama. It uses all the clichés in the book! I also never really bothered about the dad or the daughter and their suffering. None of the characters, except for the mother, got my sympathy. For some reason they are not really likable. The one "softer" thug that helps the girl, had some potential of character development, but for some reason that was not exploited enough by the directors.I will really not bother if you have seen more than one of the Home Invasion type dramas in the last few years..

So I'll start out by saying i give this film stars at all because the plot is reasonably well written, it IS very scary, and even the ending is not too far from what I think would probably happen in the real world.Having said that, I took off points for over-the-top gratuity and cameras that focused for very long periods of time on the one most disturbing part of a scene while action unfolds out of frame. Stylistically, this is Hostle-esque albeit much more believable yet with the same sense of pointless brutality (which you might see as over-the-top or a reflection of the violent criminals portrayed, I'm more the former, but some the latter).This is for sure a movie to watch either alone or with a friend who you KNOW has guts of steel, this movie is shocking and WILL make girls cry so to speak (seriously, my gf would never forgive me if I took her to see a movie even resembling this). So as I said, tread carefully and prepare to put your shocked face on, cuz you're gonna be, I guarantee it; I'm someone who is perturbed by very little in cinema, THIS PERTURBED ME. But I suppose I can't decide if it was worth watching or not, interesting, to be sure.