Exciting, terrifying, worrisome stuff saturates every second of Prisoners, holding you captive, keeping you guessing until the bitter end.

Your child is missing. Every second counts. How far would you go? When his six year old daughter Anna goes missing along with her friend Joy, Keller Dover faces every parent’s worst nightmare. The only lead is a dilapidated RV that had been spotted earlier on the street. Detective Loki is put in charge of the investigation and immediately arrests the driver of the RV, Alex Jones, however a lack of physical evidence forces them to release him. With the police pursuing different leads to no avail and his family life disintegrating, a desperate Keller decides to take matters into his own hands. But just how far will he go to save his daughter?

Maybe it has to do with the overall efficiency of Villeneuve’s direction, opposite a few coincidences that come up over the course of the nearly 150-minute running time that contradict how effective the rest of the film is. It’s not fair, but the film is almost a victim of its own success in this case.