Carlos Prime [Celluloid 05.01.17] scifi horror thriller



[Editor's note: The inimitable Jason Widgington also review Rupture out of Fantastic Fest in 2016. Spoiler alert, he also liked it.]

Steven Shainberg (Hard Candy) has been out of the director’s chair for quite a while, but it hasn’t stopped his creative juices from flowing. He’s written seven scripts, itching to get them made, and diving head first into sci-fi with his first movie in a decade, Rupture.

Renee (Noomi Rapace) gets abducted on the way to her first skydiving adventure and her captors are oddly scientific in their imprisonment of her. Attempts at escape seem futile and overwhelmingly stacked against her. What do they want? Who are they? Why do they have so many spiders available for some Orwellian Room 101-type-shit?

The film touches on many a genre- horror, fetish, torture porn, alien abduction- but doesn’t satisfyingly sink its teeth into any one of them. There’s a sense of overthinking the script that distracts the momentum of the film from being pulled too far in any one direction. It doesn’t necessarily do the myriad involved genres any wrong- it just ends up being a lot of cinematic foreplay for a lot of different stimuli. But, as Shainberg remarked in our interview, it’s not a genre movie- “it’s a movie!”

Genre talk aside, the film is a great specimen of a sci-fi film using a transformative experience both literally and figuratively. In being able to bend the rules of reality, Rupture shows us the sacrifices a mother is forced to make to her mind and body to be able to sustain a life other than her own. Captivity, isolation, and transformation are key elements of the very claustrophobic setting.


Rapace gives a solid performance as the terrorized and clueless Renee, which helps add to the ominous tone of anonymous confinement. While categorically not the kind of film he’s done before, we’re looking forward to some more exploration of creepy nuance sci-fi from Shainberg!


Rupture is available now on VOD.



Recommended Release: Rupture

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