What would you do if your daughter was kidnapped and couldn’t be found for weeks?
This is the haunting plot of Prisoners—one of my favorite movies, and perhaps my favorite crime thriller of all time.
The story begins with two families celebrating Thanksgiving together. Keller Dover (played by Hugh Jackman) is the father of the Dover family, and one of the central characters. Both families—the Dovers and the Birches—have young daughters, each around seven years old. The Dovers also have a teenage son, Ralph.
Later, the daughters go outside to play. Hours pass, and the families began to panic when they realize the girls didn’t return. They search the neighborhood, but there is no trace of them. Then Ralph notices a suspicious RV parked in front of a nearby house before is lost.
They call the police, and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes charge of the investigation. He sees the RV while eating at a small restaurant. Inside,
there is a quiet young man named Alex (Paul Dano). Alex is arrested as the prime suspect, but soon released due to lack of evidence and his developmental disability—making it unlikely he could have organized a kidnapping.
But Keller isn’t convinced. To him, since Alex is still the only suspect they’ve got, he is very convinced that Alex did it. Consumed by fear and anger, Keller decides to take matters into his own hands. He begins following Alex, watching him closely.
One night, while Alex is walking his dog, Keller hears him singing – not just any song, but the same made-up melody his daughter used to sing at home.
Keller demands answers from Alex, asking him where he heard that song. But Alex stays silent. That’s when Keller loses control—he kidnaps Alex himself. He takes him to an abandoned house and begins torturing him, forcing a confession.
But Alex refuses to speak. It’s clear he knows something, yet he won’t say it. But how could he know the song if he wasn’t the kidnapper?
Meanwhile, Detective Loki continues his own investigation. He questions neighbors, visits nearby shops, and even speaks with Alex’s mother, but he can’t find any real evidence. By this time, Keller goes insane. He brutally tortures Alex, but only manages to get a few words, “unrelated” with the girls.
Now I won’t go into every single detail, because I don’t want this to turn into a full movie script. I’ll just summarize and share my opinions.
Long story short, the real kidnapper turns out to be Alex’s so-called “mother.” She had kidnapped Alex when he was a child, which explains his disabilities and trauma. In the end, Detective Loki manages to rescue the kidnapped girls, but Keller himself falls into the kidnapper’s trap. Alex is left deeply scarred—physically and mentally.
One thing I love about this movie is the atmosphere. The cold, rainy place adds so much to the film’s tone, making the story feel even heavier and more real. It makes you feel the cold, as if you’re standing in the middle of a dark winter forest. The atmosphere and everything around it is scarily accurate.
Another thing is, this movie feels very realistic. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen those movies with bad acting,
unconvincing atmosphere, plot holes or poorly written dialogues. I don’t want to give examples, but you probably know which kind of movies I’m talking about. Those kind of movies don’t feel real at all – it just feels like watching a…movie. This one is nothing like that. Acting is top tier — in fact, I think it’s one of the best acting performances in cinema. It has literally no plot holes; everything is perfectly explained. The characters behave like real people, not like “movie characters”.
We feel sorry for Alex throughout the whole movie. Poor guy was traumatized, taken away from his parents as a child, abused for his whole life and then blamed for kidnapping and tortured for weeks. I’m sure at some point Keller knew Alex wasn’t the kidnapper he was looking for. But he kept torturing him. Why?
Because Alex was his only hope.
His daughter was missing — maybe dead — but there were no suspects, no evidence, nothing. He was hopeless. He needed a possibility to hold on to, to believe his daughter was maybe still alive, still out there breathing. Alex was the only suspect, the only one who might know something about the girls. He needed something to hold on to — answers, a suspect, a piece of evidence, a clue, anything. And Alex was all he had. In fact, it was clear Alex knew something about the kidnapping. Keller didn’t want to believe Alex was innocent, because that would mean he had nothing, literally nothing left about the case. That’s the psychology of fear. A psychology of a man who failed to protect his daughter.
Now, back to our first question. If you were in this situation, would you do the same?
Was Keller wrong?
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