“Hero is captured and tied up in room – bad guys go for coffee break – hero escapes through air vent using concealed penknife.” A film that thinks this is fine as a pivotal scene is unlikely to score highly in the originality or inventiveness stakes. And so it proves with this sci-fi horror, that ends the ten-year hiatus from filmmaking of Steven Shainberg (he of Secretary fame).
It aims for The Shining, but ends up feeling more like a Syfy TV show.
Renee (Rapace) is a single mother whose home is full to bursting with hidden cameras that she did not install. She is kidnapped, tasered, bundled into the boot of a van and driven to a strange, starkly-lit office complex. There she is tied up on a table and gawped at by a mysterious cult featuring Michael Chiklis (in Brent goatee and business suit combo) and Peter Stormare (Mumford & Sons waistcoat), who are both as reliably menacing as we have come to expect. Their intention is to conduct some kind of complex, psycho-medical procedure on her. But first, that coffee break.
From there on out, Rupture is a pretty much a straight-up escape movie. Rapace gamely charges down corridor after corridor and crawls along ventilation shaft after ventilation shaft – her captors bafflingly unable to pin her down despite the fact that, a) she is massively outnumbered, b) she has been drugged with hallucinatory sedatives, and c) she is navigating a building she has never been in before, but which they know like the back of their hands.
The big explanation as to why this cult are doing what they’re doing is flimsy, takes forever to arrive and isn't really that clear when it does. The whole thing climaxes with some really-not-great CGI: a whimpering end to a film that shoots for The Shining-level psychological horror, but ends up feeling more like a Syfy TV show.
