Captive Files I (Shiku no Heya) review

Between the fairly generic region 1 DVD title, Captive Files I and the tone of some of its promotional materials you’d think it’d be safe to assume that “Shiku no Heya” is just another disturbing rape/torture/bondage exploitation film. Thankfully though, when I actually got around to watching it I was pleased to discover it’s actually a relatively well thought out psychological thriller with a certain level of depth.  And in a unique twist to the captivity genre, a clever and pro-active victim/heroine turned what could have quickly deteriorated into a degrading “shock” film into a battle of wits that manages to keep the viewer guessing until the very end.

In the film, character actor Kazuyoshi Ozawa plays a postal worker named Sagawa who’s been painstakingly stalking a young woman named Madoka Suzuki for quite a while. By secretly reading all her mail and cataloging it via Polaroid photos he feels like he knows pretty much everything he needs to know about her. In particular, he discovers that she’s desperately lonely in her personal life and generally ignored by friends and family. In fact, this simple aspect of her life—above all else—makes her the perfect target for his plan to capture a woman and force her to love him.

It’s obvious that Sagawa has planned this out for a long time. When he finally incapacitates Madoka and takes her back to his apartment he begins a pattern of mental abuse right away. If she struggles or doesn’t respond properly to his questions he repeatedly plugs her nose with her mouth already duct taped shut, allowing her to suffocate nearly to the point of passing out before removing it and reiterating the proper way to respond. His methods are so cruel and calculated that it soon becomes clear he’s not just some random maniac driven by sexual impulses; he just genuinely believes that he can train her to love him. And in a way, that just makes him even scarier.

When Madoka finds a book on criminal psychology on one of Sagawa’s shelves she begins to read up on “Stockholm Syndrome”, a mental defense mechanism sometimes exhibited by abductees who begin to sympathize with and even become loyal to their captors. Clearly Sagawa isn’t just aware of this phenomenon; he’s actually counting on it—and it isn’t long before Madoka begins to show signs that she may be succumbing to it herself.

The story encompasses 18 months of captivity with several big leaps forward in time. Along the way we see Madoka’s methods for dealing with the unstable Sagawa gradually evolve as she begins to figure out what she has to do to make him happy. What begins as the horrifying story of a psychopath asserting his dominance over a helpless teenage girl eventually transitions into a fascinating study on the meticulous process of “training” a human being—it’s just never quite clear which one of them is being trained at any given time.

Watch trailer

Availability: US distributor MVD Visual released "Captive Files I" on region 1 DVD with English subtitles on March 18, 2008. For full specs, see this link.

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