Captive State Parent Guide

When the aliens first arrived, they quickly dominated the world, absorbing national governments, enslaving the citizenry, and plundering Earth for raw materials. Nine years have passed since the invasion, and people have grown accustomed to their alien overlords. In Chicago, Gabriel Drummond (Ashton Sanders) does small delivery jobs for a resistance movement called “Phoenix”, created by his deceased brother Rafe (Jonathan Majors). However, his efforts are hampered by the diligent efforts of his father’s former partner, Officer William Mulligan (John Goodman) to keep an eye on him. Mulligan has been tasked with destroying Phoenix and uses an attack by the resistance as an excuse to arrest and recruit Gabriel to work for the police. Will Gabriel be able to subvert the system in time to help his friends, or is it too powerful to be broken?

Captive State is biting off a lot for a movie that runs under two hours in length. It jumps around between so many characters that most of them barely get named and speak a few lines of dialogue before they disappear or get killed off. You’d think that would leave a lot of space for action, and you’d be right… kind of. While a lot of things happen, it’s not always clear what’s happening or why it’s significant. Although some of that gets resolved in the Big Ending, a good chunk of the action feels like stuff happening for the sake of stuff happening. The main character spends a good 45 minutes of the movie locked in various rooms (and offscreen) while the plot unfolds outside. Predictably, this makes the movie feel slower than molasses in a Canadian February.

Amidst the chaos that passes for a plot, the biggest surprise is that the film sneaks in at a PG-13 rating. There isn’t a huge amount of swearing – mainly because there isn’t much dialogue that extends beyond a half dozen words. But the language has a disproportionate amount of extreme profanity, particularly three sexual expletives. Similarly, while there isn’t any recreational drinking or smoking, it is implied that a character uses cocaine to boost his courage. The real kicker, though, is the violence. Not surprisingly, a movie about resisting an alien occupation is full of violent confrontations and features scenes of torture, police brutality, suicide, and bombings. This is assuredly not a movie for children or sensitive viewers of any age.

Captive State isn’t terrible, but there’s a lot of dead space between “terrible” and “good”. The movie raises interesting questions about resistance and collaboration, and even comes close to providing an answer for some of them but does so without personality or fleshed-out characters. Where the film succeeds is in its strong tone and intriguing world-building, but that’s certainly not enough to save it. The real interest for audiences lies in figuring out how much of the story is borrowed from similar and better films. While Captive State manages to be mildly diverting, the only way it will make any money is if it has a captive audience.