Chained (2020)

(On Cable TV, November 2021) I was never convinced by much of Chained, as the film can’t even figure out that it wants to be exploitation thriller. Let’s see: What feels like a dull-as-dirt urban teen drama (complete with a disadvantaged black kid striving to improve himself in a context of an abusive father, neighbourhood bullies and an unsympathetic school environment) suddenly becomes interesting when our 13-year-old protagonist investigates an abandoned warehouse to discover a chained man and a key-bearing corpse just out of reach. Rather than hand over the key to the survivor and running as fast as he can, our supposedly brilliant protagonist ends up keeping him there, feeding him and making conversation until he figures out what happened. If that’s unlikely enough, consider that much of the Chained’s second half is concerned with the protagonist turning to the dark side, retrieving a very large amount of money and using it to buy a farm where he intends to grow restaurant-grade garlic. It’s not a bad business plan, but geez… are we still watching the same film? Suffice to say that as things escalate, viewers are liable to wonder where they’re going with all of this. Writer-director Titus Heckel somehow leads this as a straight (read: not inherently laughable) premise, removing even the advantage that a campy or exploitative approach may have carried. As a result, Chained feels disjointed and ludicrous for its entire duration, an approach at odds with its deathly serious tone. The evolution of the likable plant-growing protagonist into an outright villain is something that could have been dramatically fascinating, but it here feels forced and unwanted. The cinematography and other production values are not bad for a low-budget Canadian film, but it’s the tone in which the story is told that simply doesn’t work.