Prisoners (2013 film)

In Pennsylvania, carpenter Keller Dover and his family visit their neighbors the Birches for Thanksgiving. That evening, the families' daughters, Anna and Joy, disappear. Detective Loki arrests Alex Jones, a man driving the RV pointed out by Keller's son. Loki then visits Alex's home where he lives with his aunt Holly, after getting no information via interrogation. Loki then later reveals to the Dovers that Alex is intellectually disabled with an IQ of a 10 year old and no physical evidence has been found in the RV or his home.

Loki investigates local sex offender and former priest Patrick Dunn, where he finds a corpse in a hidden cellar. Dunn reveals he killed the man after he confessed to murdering sixteen children. The following day, Alex is released. Convinced of his guilt, Keller assaults Alex outside the police station, during which Alex says "They didn't cry 'til I left them". Based on this, Keller kidnaps and holds Alex captive in his childhood home. Joy's father Franklin reluctantly accompanies Keller in interrogating and torturing Alex over the course of several days; his wife Nancy convinces Franklin to stop, but decides not to turn in Keller.

Loki visits the previous owner of the empty home the RV was seen parked in front of, Mrs. Milland. She tells him that her son Barry was kidnapped 26 years prior and was never found. During a vigil for Anna and Joy, Loki chases and fails to apprehend a hooded figure who then burglarizes the Dover and Birch residences; Keller's wife Grace, who has relapsed into a prescription drug addiction, notices this. Suspicious of Alex's disappearance, Loki follows Keller to the building but leaves when the hooded man, Bob Taylor, is located. Loki detains Taylor and discovers the walls in his home are covered in maze drawings. He stumbles upon several locked crates filled with snakes and bloody clothing. Taylor confesses to the kidnappings and draws mazes in his interrogation room. Frustrated, Loki assaults him, but Taylor gains control of another officer's gun and commits suicide.

The Dover and Birch families identify photos of the bloodied clothing as their children's. Keller visits Holly to apologize for assaulting Alex. He learns she and her late husband adopted Alex after their son died of cancer. Meanwhile, Loki notices a resemblance between one of Taylor's mazes and a necklace belonging to the corpse in Dunn's basement. He is informed that most of the bloody clothes were store-bought and soaked with pig blood. He also finds Taylor's footprints below a window at the Dover house, along with Anna's sock.

Joy is found and reunited with her parents, and is hospitalized; the two children were drugged and staged an escape, but Anna was caught. When Keller asks Joy for information, she remembers little, but says she saw him there. Keller realizes she saw him at Holly's house and flees. Loki travels to Keller's building to find him, but instead finds Alex.

Keller arrives at Holly's and she holds him at gunpoint. She reveals that she and her husband abducted children of Christian families as a "war on God" to avenge their son's death and make similar families feel the same crisis of faith. Alex (Barry Milland) was their first abduction and Taylor their second. Holly drugs Keller and imprisons him in a hidden pit in her yard, where he finds his daughter's emergency whistle. Loki arrives at Holly's house to inform her Alex has been found. Seeing a photo of her late husband with the maze necklace, he realizes that Holly is the kidnapper and searches for her, finding her in process of giving Anna an injection. Loki kills Holly in a shootout, and rushes Anna to the hospital while wounded.

Anna and Joy visit Loki in the hospital to thank him. Grace acknowledges that Keller will be arrested if found, but insists he is a good man. Later, Loki returns to Holly's house, where he faintly hears Keller blowing the whistle.

Aaron Guzikowski wrote the script based on a short story he wrote, involving "a father whose kid was struck by a hit-and-run driver and then puts this guy in a well in his backyard". That short story was partially inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".[4]

After he wrote the spec, many actors and directors entered and exited the project, including actors Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio and directors Antoine Fuqua and Bryan Singer.[4]

Ultimately Guzikowski would credit producer Mark Wahlberg for getting the project on its feet, stating, "He was totally pivotal in getting the film made. That endorsement helped it get around."[4] Principal photography began in Georgia in February 2013.[5]

The Prisoners soundtrack, composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson, was released on September 20, 2013.[21]

• The Secret in Their Eyes (2009), an Argentine-Spanish film which includes a theme of suspect kidnapping.
• Secret in Their Eyes (2015), an American remake of The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Prisoners (2013 film).

• Official website
• Prisoners at IMDb 
• Prisoners at AllMovie
• Prisoners at Box Office Mojo
• Prisoners at Metacritic
• Prisoners at Rotten Tomatoes