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American audiences first took notice of Swedish actress Noomi Rapace when she starred in the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films. Since then, she’s starred in a number of big Hollywood films. But in the indie thriller Rupture, she returns to edgy action—with less than stunning results.
Rupture follows single mom Renee (Rapace) as a weekend without her son takes a terrifying turn. As she’s heading out to go skydiving with a friend from work, a tire on Renee’s car blows out. Before she even realizes what’s happening, the two men who stop to help her are suddenly restraining her and locking her away in a truck, which transports her to a dark and mysterious facility. There, she’s injected with strange liquids and forced to undergo a number of strange tests that seem built around her greatest fears.
After a quick glance at the cast list of Rupture—which also includes Michael Chiklis, Peter Stormare, and Lesley Manville—viewers might expect a worthwhile experience. Unfortunately, though, while both the intriguing cast list and the creepy setup may seem promising, that’s about as far as it goes.
After a little bit of background, Renee is whisked away and locked up in some kind of abandoned building, but the whole process takes so long that the pacing soon starts to drag. She’s poked and prodded and tested, but it isn’t until much later that the purpose of the experiments is gradually (and minimally) explained. And when the reasoning behind the tests and torture is revealed, it’s disappointingly unimaginative.
Along the way, the film mixes up a mess of ideas and situations, seemingly in the hopes that something will grab the audience. There’s kidnapping, torture, some bizarre sci-fi twists, some thoughts on motherhood, some amusingly horrified supporting characters, and a bunch of unanswered questions. There may be some interesting aspects here, but they’re all a little muddled. And when everything comes together, it isn’t nearly as gripping as it should have been.
Sadly, even the cast members aren’t able to do much with what they’ve been given. Most of the recognizable cast is completely underused, while Rapace takes the hardest hit. She’s a talented actress, and she gives it her all, trying to fight her way through awkward writing and laughable scenarios. But even she can’t make it worth watching.
Some indie sci-fi thrillers can be smart and suspenseful. Others can be amusingly tacky. But Rupture is just a jumble of poorly-done action and overused ideas—not even the kind of movie that’s worth watching on late-night TV.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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