Imagine escaping one of the most abhorrently horrific situations that is currently expanding on a global scale, only to be unknowingly walking back into that literal house of horrors many years later. Now, visualize this scenario playing out it’s skillfully set up retreat into disillusionment for our inconceivable entertainment. Thus is the basis behind James Cullen Bressack’s Captors.  

Similarly to his ultra-disturbing film Hate Crime, Bressack has a knack for taking the cruelest, real-life circumstances and adding his twist to an already hopeless black hole of human degradation and despair. Captors delivers such horror, through a sordid and slipping-down life of a human-trafficked survivor.  

Alys is still mapping out her recovery through intense therapy and an unfortunate squalor living conditions which she is trying to overcome. When she is pushed out of counseling due to typical bureaucratic bullshit, her fears of becoming homeless while still traumatized from her years in captivity begin to spark her night terrors into dangerous territory. However, an unbelievable development provides Alys with new hope after inheriting a home in the outer banks of Michigan.

With this newfound lease on life and peace in her heart, Alys spends her first day enjoying the winter wonderland beauty of home ownership, eating full balanced meals with hearty content and relishing in the tranquility of finally feeling free. Unfortunately, this euphoria is extremely short lived once she discovers the secrets in this bequeathed asset. Basement walls plastered with her photos of recent activities and a CD with her name written across it, unleash a sinister underlying agenda of why Alys was really brought onto this property: to relive the past torments of imprisonment, sexual torture and the possessive “love” developed from her evil abductor.

As the days progress, so does the mental anguish through starvation (after being told all the food has been tainted), suspicious movements, haunting visions and trippy hallucinations. Alys’ exposure to this now invisible control over her wellbeing has left her broken and abused once again. Although she escaped from her confinement years ago, the idea of building her future in her former hell house is sadistic and somewhat confusing. But that has always been the contemplative way of Bressack’s films - leaving it up to our perspective as there’s no incorrect way to interpret his ingenuity. It just seems to work, and he knows how to work it.