Prisoners

"The war we wage with God" and they started this off with an Our Father. and continued the reference, love that. Prisoners, is such a... fitting name. (Dylan Minnette gave me a jumpscare seriously, I didn't expect to see him in this) AB SO LOUTE LY PHE NO ME NAL.stressing on every single syllable there. literal perfection, and so my kind of thing. this earns an easy spot as one of my favourite films of all time. it crosses all the boxes on my checklist, great cinematography, plot, pacing, acting, storytelling.  spine chilling performances from Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and David Dastmalchian. couldn't take my eyes off any of them, they all seriously delivered their parts so well.  I was a little intimidated by this at first, with the total duration of this film coming to a whopping 2h 33min but surprisingly, it didn't feel that long at all. I was literally glued to the screen and when I checked how long I was watching it for, I was impressed. not a single moment felt dull, and there were no need for frequent time checks (as I usually do with long films). needless to say that the pacing of this film is incredible, everything managed to fit well within the time span, and there was ample time to also expand on various parts of the storyline. what I also like about this film is that the audience's intelligence is never undermined. everything is shown with reason, and implication. subtle, but strong. and what some films do is that they purposefully show it to you for you to get the idea, but WE KNOW. what Prisoners does is that it lets you connect the dots yourself, by revealing everything slowly and each at a time, which is what I enjoy in films. the duration was perfect for this. I knew that woman was up to no good halfway through the film, there was something off about her and I was right. I didn't expect the film to turn to that direction, but it was so smoothly done. masterfully executed as well. it was genius connecting all the sequences together. and finally making sense of the whole thing using the bigger picture. every detail counts and that is truly what makes this whole film so complete. using the red whistle as a factor to tie together the whole thing is just, amazing. the maze necklace tied very well too and it was very full circle using these two details. the many things revealed in the last part of the film like Alex being the kid that was abducted many years ago, Barry, left me in shock. every thing really came into play, not a single detail revealed was left unexplored or untouched. no plot holes at all, truly a perfect film, perfect execution. Prisoners is truly up there in best cinematography in my books. i was supposed to make a list of shots I really liked but there would be too many to put in I absolutely adore the way everything was shot. but if I had to choose something to talk about it would be the silhouette shots where characters' entire bodies are black against the low exposure background, those are my all time favourite kind of shots. "Pray for the best. Prepare for the worst."