Abduction: A kidnapping plot that makes zero sense

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, you can probably skip this one unless you have a strange obsession with 1930s German dramas. If you love messy family dynamics and people doing incredibly stupid things for 'the greater good,' you might get a kick out of it. If you prefer movies where characters have more than two brain cells, you will absolutely hate this.

The whole premise of Abduction is just wild. An 18-year-old decides that the best way to get her mom to focus on the household instead of whatever else she’s doing is to pretend to be kidnapped. It’s the kind of high-stakes gamble that makes you wonder if the writers were just throwing darts at a board.

The pacing is a bit of a slog. You spend so much time watching these characters talk around each other that you almost forget there is supposed to be a crime happening. It feels like they needed an extra twenty minutes of dialogue just to justify the runtime.

There is this one scene where a character walks across the room and trips over a rug—I’m pretty sure it wasn’t scripted, but they kept it in. It’s that kind of movie. Slightly unpolished, a bit dusty, and strangely committed to its own nonsense.

Random thoughts:

• Theo Lingen is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
• The lighting in the 'kidnapping' scenes looks like it was done with a single desk lamp.
• The mother character is so oblivious it’s actually kind of impressive.
• If you want to see a much better take on domestic chaos, maybe go check out The Merry Frinks instead.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely a coherent story, really. But there’s a weird charm to watching these actors try to sell such a ridiculous premise with a straight face. You can feel them sweating through the scenes, hoping the audience doesn't think too hard about the plot holes.

Sometimes, the movie gets so caught up in the drama that it forgets it’s supposed to be a thriller. Then it remembers, throws in a dramatic door slam, and goes back to tea and secrets. It’s an uneven ride, for sure. 🤷‍♂️