Very well done, super depressing

Rating: 7/10 (20 October 2013)

Just to be clear, I'm not a person who dislikes movies that are sad, challenging, difficult to watch. I think many of them have artistic value. I think this one does too because it was so well acted, so well done, and succeeded in making you think and keeping you on the edge of your seat.
That being said, this was a pretty sick movie. Very depressing, left you with a feeling of dread and distrust in humans. Again, some people value that, but I just wasn't feeling it after the movie.
The biggest thing for me was the fact that at the end of all this, the girls are found, and you find out the kid Hugh Jackman was torturing was entirely innocent...a victim himself. So, with that extreme moral dilemma being resolved to highly immoral, it leaves you kind of hating Hugh Jackman, and then the ambiguous ending was kind of like...really? So if he dies, whatever...he tortured another human being for over a week in horrible ways. If he doesn't die, great he's reunited with his now very messed up family. It leaves you with not caring too much either way, but it did make me think about the implications of what had happened in the movie.
Anyway, great movie, one of the most suspenseful I've seen, but I wouldn't recommend it to hardly anyone I know. There are plenty of downright depressing things going on in the world, and sitting through watching a human being torture another innocent human being is just not too worth it.
Afterthought: I also disliked the clearly fabricated red herrings such as Alex hanging the dog. I can understand if he was singing the song because he is simple minded like a child, but the hanging the dog was EXTREMELY intentional. He looked at Hugh Jackman, then did it. It was ONLY there so the audience would also second guess during the whole torture aspect. Also, this other kid who had been abducted who happened to be stealing clothes and imitating a child kidnapper but was ENTIRELY unrelated to the lady? Come on. Talk about just feeding the audience highly fabricated information that was essentially unrelated but made you think it should be important.