Lily (Tori Kostic) has run away from her abusive father with her boyfriend, Neil (Jarius Carey). She becomes separated from Neil when he heads off to find some water but doesn’t come back. The pair kept their phones turned off so they can’t be tracked, and he took Lily’s with him. She wanders about looking for him and stumbles on a house on the outskirts of the woods. When she asks to use the phone, the owner, Evan (William Kircher), reacts oddly. He is convinced Lily is his own renegade daughter, Katherine (Meghan Hanako). Evan is clearly not a well man. Over the following weeks, Evan’s overbearing ‘fathering’ includes forcing Lily to train on a treadmill and locking her in the cellar or her room. Does Evan have a more sinister agenda though?

Captive is a tense thriller that throws the viewer almost straight into the story. Writer/director Savvas Christou uses flashbacks to show us the different sorts of abuse Ivy and Katherine had to put up with their respective fathers. William Kircher is terrifyingly brilliant as Evan, the delusional father who is so distraught at his daughter leaving (and his wife dying in a car crash) that he convinces himself she is Lily. We’re never quite sure of the extent of Evan’s motives and how far the abuse will go, provoking some genuinely uncomfortable moments.

There’s a slow pace to the narrative, which works in the film’s favour as Ivy finds Katherine’s diary and begins to learn how to cope with the situation and perhaps formulate an escape. Our empathy shifts several times between both characters since Evan is clearly having mental health issues. Being mostly a two-hander, Kostic and Kircher have to be consistently good, so it’s great to be able to say that they are fantastic. The dynamic between the pair is electric and leads the way brilliantly to its startling climax.

Captive is a disturbing, claustrophobic thriller that packs a punch.