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Pet (2016)




Seth (Dominic Monaghan) is a lonely mild mannered guy who doesn't have a lot going for him, he has no girlfriend, no friends, and a job at a pet shelter that barely bring in enough cash to pay the bills. One day on the bus he spots Holly (Ksenia Solo), a pretty girl that he recognizes from high school. Seth is desperate to ask Holly out but he simply doesn't have the looks or skills to impress her and ends up getting shut down, after a few more failed attempts at asking Holly out Seth starts to become obsessed. Eventually Seth's obsession drives him to kidnap Holly, but things don't go exactly the way he planned. I'll refrain from saying more about the plot since one of the few things that this film has going for is that it puts an interesting spin on the whole "Captive" premise.

The film starts off pretty dry, the set up is bland and none of the characters really caught my interest at all. I started becoming a little eager for Seth to just Kidnap Holly already because I just wasn't interested in watching him sulk around obsessing over her and stalking her. Once Seth Kidnaps Holly things do get slightly better, but not much. As I said before the film throws a little curve ball here that mixes things up a bit, it was definitely interesting but they just don't do a whole lot with it, the majority of the film is still just a run of the mill captive flick. There is a little bit of gore, but aside from that and the little twist there just wasn't that much content here. It was basically just enough to keep me from turning it off.

Another thing that becomes clear right away with this film is that even though the cast features a lot of familiar faces, the acting is actually pretty sub par. Lots of mono toned deliveries and many lines that you can tell were supposed to be delivered with a lot of emotion but just come off forced. The majority of the actors featured in the film have given much better performances in previous works that they have been in, so it was weird to see them all just fall flat. It's definitely not the worst acting ever, but it does take away from the tone of the film and makes it a lot less captivating, since this is a pretty dialogue heavy film that was a pretty big blow.

Despite the ok premise, this just wasn't a good film. It had some potential but overall it just fails to do anything worthwhile.