Prisoners (2013)

Prisoners is a 2013 American thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve from a screenplay written by Aaron Guzikowski. The film has an ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano.^[3] It was Villeneuve's first English-language feature film.

The plot focuses on the abduction of two young girls in Pennsylvania and the subsequent search for the suspected abductor by the police. After police arrest a young suspect and release him, the father of one of the daughters takes matters into his own hands. The film was a financial and critical success, grossing US$122 million worldwide. It was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2013, and at the 86th Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Cinematography.

In Pennsylvania, Keller Dover, his wife Grace, son Ralph, and daughter Anna celebrate Thanksgiving dinner with their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch and daughters Eliza and Joy. The four children go for a walk and notice a parked RV. After dinner, daughters Anna and Joy go missing. Keller calls the police to report their disappearances. Detective Loki responds, locates the RV at the edge of the woods, and arrests the driver, Alex Jones.

During interrogation, Loki realizes Alex's diminished IQ prevents him from planning a kidnapping, and that his RV contains no forensic evidence of the missing girls. Loki runs down leads on local pedophiles and finds Father Patrick Dunn, a priest with a corpse in his basement. Dunn admits to killing the man after he confessed to murdering 16 children for his "war on god."

Loki releases Alex to his aunt Holly. Convinced of Alex's guilt, Dover assaults him outside the police station. Alex tells Dover that "They didn't cry until I left them." Dover confronts Loki with the new information, but Loki cannot verify its veracity. Dover kidnaps Alex and imprisons him in an abandoned apartment building to torture him for information on the missing girls.

At a vigil for the girls, Loki notes a suspicious man in the crowd who subsequently flees. Loki releases a police sketch of the suspect to the local community. That night, the suspect sneaks into the Birch and Keller houses. Grace hears him and calls the police. Loki investigates and learns that Dover spends his nights away from home. He tails Dover to the apartment building, where Dover claims he sleeps to hide his grief and alcoholism from his family. Loki gets a call from a clerk who recognizes the suspect in the sketch. Loki tracks the suspect, Bob Taylor, to his apartment, and finds walls covered in maze drawings and crates filled with snakes and bloody children's clothes.

Loki discovers Taylor was abducted as a child. As Taylor meticulously scribbles maze drawings, Loki assaults him and demands the location of the missing girls. Taylor grabs an officer's gun and kills himself without revealing their location. The Birches and Kellers view photos of Taylor's apartment and identify several bloody clothes as Joy's and Anna's and conclude the girls are dead. At Taylor's apartment, Loki realizes many of the clothes are store-bought and are soaked with pigs blood. Loki concludes that Joy's and Anna's clothes were stolen from their homes.

Dover tortures Alex, who cryptically talks about escaping from a maze. Dover visits Alex's aunt Holly, apologizing for Alex's disappearance while hiding his own involvement. Holly says Alex's speech disability comes from a childhood accident the snakes her husband kept as pets. While devoutly religious, Holly and her husband lost their faith after their son died of cancer, and adopted Alex as a way to cope.

At the police station, Loki matches the maze pattern in Taylor's drawings to a necklace worn by the murdered man in Father Dunn's basement. Joy is found alive and rushed to a hospital. Dover arrives and grills her on information about Anna. Joy, her memory hazy, can only mumble: "You were there." Dover realizes what she means and rushes from the hospital, narrowly avoiding Loki, who travels to Dover's father's apartment expecting to find Dover but instead finds Alex.

Dover confronts Holly and accuses her of kidnapping the girls. Holly explains that before her husband disappeared, they abducted children as part of their "war on God" to avenge their son's death and create demons out of the traumatized parents. Alex was their first abduction, Taylor their second. She says Alex only took the girls for a ride, but Holly decided to abduct them. Holding Dover at gunpoint, Holly drugs and imprisons him in a hidden pit in her yard, where he finds an emergency whistle belonging to his daughter.

Loki arrives to inform Holly that Alex has been found. He enters her house and discovers a photo of her late husband wearing the same maze necklace as the corpse in Dunn's basement. He concludes that Dunn killed her husband after he admitted to murdering children. As he searches the house, he finds Holly ready to kill Anna. They shoot each other. Loki is wounded, but kills Holly. Loki rushes Anna to the hospital.

Alex is reunited with his parents. Joy and Anna return home with their families. Grace thanks Loki for all he's done, despite the knowledge that when he finds Dover, he'll likely go to prison. Loki returns to Holly's house to supervise a forensic excavation. He halts work for the night. Alone in the driveway, Loki faintly hears a whistle blowing.