UNITED KINGDOM: Elisha Cutbhert, star of new horror film "Captivity" talks fears, phobias and the controversy surrounding the film's advertising campaigns

Record ID: 566605

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Elisha Cutbhert, star of new horror film "Captivity" talks fears, phobias and the controversy surrounding the film's advertising campaigns
  • Date: 28th June 2007
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JUNE 20, 2007) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTRESS ELISHA CUTHBERT SAYING: "You know, the amazing part about our film is that we touch on so many different phobias like claustrophobia and fear of the dark and lots of different situations and that's kind of going to be great because everyone is kind of going to relate to it someway and be afraid of certain things, certain aspects of the movie." (REPORTER ASKING: "What was the hardest part for you?") (ANSWER PARTLY OVERLAID WITH FILM CLIPS) "The sand scene was really difficult but maybe the blender I think, just because it felt so real at the time and I was sort of getting into it, without giving too much away, just sort of was so enamoured by what we were doing that I actually felt physically sick. But other than that, everything else was kind of fun to do."
  • Embargoed: 13th July 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Reuters ID: LVA66U3L01S6A7MIRHF4U7F2KA3Q
  • Story Text: Whilst family-friendly summer sequels are making box office records around the world, new horror film "Captivity" is bringing gore, psychological and physical torture on cinema screens.
    The movie follows the abduction of model and actress Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) and the gruesome treatment she receives in the hands of her captor.
    The model's drink is spiked at an A-list party and Jennifer gets kidnapped and locked in an underground cell. It soon becomes evident her captor knows every detail about his prisoner and subjects the model to horrifying tortures that match her deepest fears.
    Amidst images and remains of other victims, Jennifer soon finds out she is not alone, spotting a young, handsome man, Gary, in an adjoining cell. Under the tense circumstances, the two start developing feelings for each other, with consequences that shape the outcome of their confinement.
    During a recent promotional trip to London, England, star of the movie, Elisha Cuthbert summed up the movie as a "horror movie about a girl who gets kidnapped and has to find her way out, and falls in love at the same time".
    The actress said the gory scenes that play on the young woman's every fear were guaranteed to strike a chord with audiences' private phobias.
    "You know, the amazing part about our film is that we touch on so many different phobias like claustrophobia and fear of the dark and lots of different situations and that's kind of going to be great because everyone is kind of going to relate to it someway and be afraid of certain things, certain aspects of the movie," she told Reuters.
    Cuthbert said director Roland Joffe had helped her understand the shock her character goes through by making her experience it first-hand.
    "Our first day on set Roland put a blind fold on my eyes and I got carried into the cell and we filmed my reaction to the first experience of being in the cell, which was amazing because that really helped me understand that this is what it's like to wake up to something that is completely foreign and unknown. So that was a really cool thing that Roland did for me, for my character," she said.
    However, she added that after the initial shock and once scenes involving a sand-filled box and a blender and bloody body parts were out of the way, the eerie set failed to scare her.
    "The sand scene was really difficult but maybe the blender I think, just because it felt so real at the time and I was sort of getting into it, without giving too much away, just sort of was so enamoured by what we were doing that I actually felt physically sick. But other than that, everything else was kind of fun to do," she said.
    But while making the film might have been fun for Cuthbert, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) found the movie's advertising campaigns less so.
    The posters for "Captivity", released in the U.S. in early Spring, featured four frames with the captions "Abduction", "Confinement", "Torture" and "Termination" combined with pictures of Cuthbert in apt poses.
    After a flood of complaints, the MPAA sanctioned the film for the advertising campaign it said depicted a woman's torture and death, imposing a month-long suspension of the rating process for the film.
    As a result, the film's production company pulled the advertisements and were forced to reschedule the film's release date until later in the summer.
    For Cuthbert, the controversy surrounding the advertisement had been a learning curve but the actress said she'd decided to concentrate on the positive side-effects.
    "I've never dealt with anything like this before so it's sort of really shocking to me but at the same time the great thing about is that we have 30 million people chatting about it online and you couldn't ask for anything more. I mean, especially for this genre, I know long time ago when the Exorcist came out there was buzz about how people were getting physically sick in the cinema and that actually made people want to see it and I kind of think it's going to get people interested in thinking about the film and hopefully they'll come to check it out," she said.
    With the delayed U.S. release date, "Captivity" got its first outing in the U.K., with a June 22 release and will be released in the U.S. on July 13.
    The film is directed by Roland Joffe, whose previous films include "The Killing Fields" and "The Mission" and stars Daniel Gillies as "Gary" and Pruitt Taylor Vince as "Ben", the serial killer.
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