The debut feature from British writer-director J Blakeson, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, indicates the young man is already an assured filmmaking craftsman. His psychological thriller, which rattles along at a disconcerting, disorienting pace, exhibits a great feel for the rhythms of film language; Blakeson obviously relishes the post-production process, especially the hours spent in the editing room.
This is no more evident than in the film’s opening 10 minutes. Devoid of dialogue, two singularly-focussed men, whom we will come to know as kidnappers Vic (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston), prepare a room and then a van for the impending moment when they’ll seize their prey, Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton). It’s a gripping flow of images and audio beats and, narratively, speaks of the determination and forethought the two men have put into this heinous act. We know a lot is at stake in this film without a word being spoken.
The men’s precision is ruthless and steely cold. Alice is bound to a bed, stripped, photographed, dressed and left hooded, gagged and terrified; she is told that hand-signals indicating bathroom needs are the only means of communication she will share with her abductors, and that it is not their intention to harm her but they will if she or her millionaire father do not do as they wish. Arterton, whose roles to date have been largely Brit TV costume dramas and big-screen eye-candy (Quantum of Solace, 2008; Clash of the Titans, 2010; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, 2010), shows a sturdy streak in these early scenes as she is asked to play frightened, meek and distraught as the men treat her with cruel ambivalence. (In one scene, she is roughly disrobed and must urinate in a hospital jar whilst a gun is aimed at her face.)
But Blakeson’s film begins to lose its grip as more details become apparent – the planning of the kidnapping, the relationship between all three, and the ongoing viability of the job at hand. To reveal the minutiae here would be to spoil the film, but some twists aren’t entirely convincing and the film overplays its hand with a few too many endings. The grand emotional pay-off that Arterton and her director strive for in the final scenes is not there, despite the actresses histrionics.
The best parts of Blakeson’s film are in its first half, when the action takes place in the kidnapper’s modified two-room lair. The dynamic between the older, meaner Vic and the wide-eyed Danny is riveting in the early stages. Marsan and Compston create a very real tension and have some great scenes together; it is a shame that Blakeson feels the need to introduce sordid elements to their backstory, none of which enhance the film or the characters. The early scenes, in which Arterton’s Alice begins her transformation, drawing on previously untapped survival instincts in her character’s resolve, are also the high point for her.
Blakeson has a natural flair for scene-blocking, utilising the confined setting with great skill; his film can stand alongside similar thrillers such as Sidney Lumet’s Deathtrap (1982), George Sluizer’s Spoorloos (aka The Vanishing, 1988) and Daisuke Gotô delicately-titled Japanese shocker Girl in Captivity: Psycho Torture Chamber (2008).
Though The Disappearance of Alice Creed doesn’t quite play out to the end, it is still a fine thriller and an exciting calling-card film for J Blakeson. He was recently named as one Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch, putting him in the company of such red-hot up-and-comers as Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), Tom Ford (A Single Man), Mia Hansen- Løve (Father of my Children) and Australia’s David Michôd (Animal Kingdom).
