In 2013 Denis Villeneuve directed the film Prisoners starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, and Paul Dano. A dark mystery that tears a family apart and drives a father to the edge of sanity, Prisoners is a tense abduction mystery where time is the most valuable resource that a desperate father has. While this film is billed as a crime/mystery thriller is Prisoners a horror movie?
There are plenty of gray areas when it comes to genre definition, and horror and thriller can often go hand in hand. The genres share many tropes and studios and streaming services often classify movies as thrillers when they would be more comfortably put into the horror category. Let's explore what the film Prisoners is about and whether there is a case to be made for it being a horror movie.
What is Prisoners About?
The film begins with a Thanksgiving trip for the Dover family. It isn't a long trip they are just going up the road to their friend's home. Father Keller (Hugh Jackman), mother Grace (Mario Bello), teenage son Ralph (Dylan Minnette), and 6-year-old Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) trudge up the wet street to the home of the Birch family, father Franklin (Terrence Howard), mother Nancy (Viola Davis), teenage daughter Eliza (Zoe Soul) and 6-year-old Joy (Kyla-Drew). Almost mirror-image families, the two households are extremely close.
During the gathering, the two youngest girls want to go outside and play, and the older siblings are roped in to watch them. Anna and Joy decide to climb all over a random RV parked in the street before being pulled away by the older siblings who realize that someone is clearly in there. After they return and have their meal together, Anna asks if she and Joy can return to the Dover's home so that they can hunt for her red whistle. Again, they are allowed to go but only if the older kids go with them. Sometime later Keller can't find the girls and soon realizes that they must have gone without telling the older kids and have yet to return.
From here the frantic hunt for the girls and the RV seen on the street begins and brings Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) into the story as he apprehends Alex Jones (Paul Dano) who is the driver of the RV. With no physical proof that Jones has anything to do with the girl's disappearance and the fact that he is developmentally disabled he is released, sending both Keller and Loki down a dark path to discover the truth about what has happened to the girls.
Ultimately, Keller tracks down Alex, abducts him, and tortures him trying to force him to talk and tell him where the children are. Meanwhile, Loki is investigating the owner of the house that the RV was parked in front of, discovering that the owner's son was abducted 26 years ago from her front yard. Loki also has to establish if there is a connection between a long-dead body in a priest's basement and the kidnappings.
Is Prisoners A Horror Movie?
The film begins with a whispered prayer by Keller as he and his son Ralph hunt a deer. The whole scene plays out in a grim and dreary way, with Keller praising his son for a job well done in getting the kill as a crucifix swings from the rearview mirror. It's easy to assume that Keller is going to be the antagonist of the story and in a way he is. His descent into cruelty and blind rage are extreme and the depths of the torture he inflicts on the abducted Jones go from violence to psychological when he constructs a small wooden box for Jones that lets in no light and leaves him with barely any room to move around.
The whole film is shrouded in gray, torrential downpours and dirt. There's a griminess to the film that leeches out any hope or joy, desperation is at the forefront of the narrative, and it is a bleak journey to the resolution. The devout Christian and a good man are destroyed by grief and consumed by rage, but it leaves the audience asking themselves how far would they go if it was their child. Another interesting facet of the film is the role of religion, Keller's family is devoutly Christian and this is contrasted against the superstitions of Loki, which while never explicitly stated are alluded to. In his introduction, he is talking about Chinese horoscopes with a waitress and asks for fortune cookies. He also has astrological symbols tattooed on his knuckles. On the other hand, it could just be an allusion to Zodiac which Gyllenhaal also starred in.
Then there is the case of the desiccated corpse in the basement of the priest's home. The moment when Loki climbs down into the hidden space and sees the figure tied to the overturned chair only to discover they are long dead is a genuinely startling moment, completely unexpected, especially considering that it doesn't seem to be tied to the disappearance of Anna and Joy, at least not at first. Then there is the puzzle of the mysterious hooded figure who appears at the candlelight vigil for the girls.
He turns out to be a man named Bob Taylor (David Dastmalchian) whose residence is covered in scrawlings of mazes that match those found on a necklace belonging to the corpse in the priest's basement. He also has locked boxes full of bloodied children's clothes and snakes and a dead pig's head in his sink. Dastmalchian's performance is brief but creepy and coupled with Dano's equally unnerving presence the two cut a frightening picture of potential child abductors.
The ultimate resolution to the film is much more complex than it seems though, with Taylor apprehended with an hour left of the film. Taylor and Jones are both very clearly damaged, but the ultimate twist in the tale is more devastating. The shots of Jones in his dark box, only one eye visible through a small circle of light are harrowing, silences punctuate scenes, and a perpetual feeling of something about to explode runs through the film.
Ultimately, Prisoners isn't strictly a horror film. It has elements of horror woven through it, it would be hard for a story about such a difficult subject not to incorporate horror. The loss of a child and feeling helpless are intrinsically frightening. However, Prisoners is overall a thriller. It is a tense and difficult story to tell and to watch and while it keeps the atmosphere fraught and oppressive consistently, it can't be classed as a straight-up horror film. Instead, it is a compelling thriller with occasional elements of horror but regardless of genre, it remains an intense and impressive film a decade on.