Kidnapped 2011

Jaime, his wife Marta and their daughter Isa have just moved into a new home, hoping for a fresh start. The calm of the family’s evening is quickly undercut by new tensions—Isa plans to attend a party with her boyfriend, while Marta and Jaime argue about how best to raise their daughter. The quarrel hangs in the air as the family tries to settle in, and the house feels increasingly vulnerable to an unseen threat.

From the shadows, three masked intruders—the Head Thief, the Young Thief, and the Strong Thief—reveal themselves as part of a moving crew with a much darker assignment. The Head Thief singles out Jaime and drags him to a bank machine miles away from home, with a chilling warning: any attempt to alert anyone will trigger violence against Marta. Herops the sense of control by insisting that any deviation will spell doom for the rest of the family. Inside the bank machine, Jaime attempts to enlist help from a passerby, but the woman misreads the situation, assuming a robbery and refusing to help. The failed plea becomes fuel for the invaders’ plans, and the Head Thief uses the moment to call the house and order the other thief to do what is necessary to Marta.

Back at the house, César calls to pick up Isa for their date, but the intruders intervene first. The Young Thief and Strong Thief drag him inside and press him to force the women to open the door. When the women remain hidden in the basement, the men break in with a brutal persistence. The violence escalates quickly: a gunfire of threats, a wrenching moment of restraint, and the steady, cold calculation of the men as the house becomes a trap rather than a home.

A security guard arrives, drawn by complaints of the television’s volume—the soundscape of fear now filling the walls. The Strong Thief pretends to be Marta’s husband, but the guard grows suspicious, and a swift act of violence ends his life. The mood tilts toward the worst possible nightmare: the Strong Thief aims to commit a grave crime against Isa. Marta, stepping forward in a desperate, protective move, offers herself in Isa’s place, but the intruder lashes out, injuring Marta and breaking her arm. The family’s resistance fragments as the men tighten their hold, and the situation devolves into a brutal power struggle with no easy answers.

In the chaos, the Young Thief is repulsed by the mounting brutality and pulls the Strong Thief away just as he readies to strike again. A struggle ensues, and Isa, clinging to a sliver of courage, uses a nearby statuette to strike back, collapsing the threat. Yet the danger isn’t over: the Young Thief counsels prudence, steering Isa away from more violence, and he exits with the sense that the house has already become too dangerous to stay in.

Meanwhile, the plan to wait out the night collapses in a blur of adrenaline and fear. Jaime and the Head Thief are in a car, their fates tethered to the ticking clock and to the hope that dawn might bring an opportunity. Instead, a reckless surge of fear drives Jaime to crash the car into a telephone pole, knocking both men unconscious. When he regains consciousness, Jaime seizes Head Thief’s gun and hurries back toward the house, while the Young Thief makes a break for it, leaving the others to fend for themselves in a country where trust is scarce and danger lurks behind every door.

The couple of hours that follow collapse into a fever dream of released victims and broken plans. Jaime and Isa reunite with Marta and César in the basement, the latter two now bound by handcuffs. Jaime places the gun in Marta’s hands and, in a final bid for help, phones the police. But at that moment, Head Thief returns to the house, and the confrontation ends in brutal, relentless violence: Jaime is killed with a sledgehammer, and Marta is fatally shot as she takes a stand against the intruder. César is also killed in the room, a stark witness to the collapse of safety inside one’s own home.

The end comes with a brutal clarity: Isa, witness to the horrors and the loss around her, falls to her knees, staring in stunned disbelief as the intruder stabs her in the stomach. The room holds its breath as the mother’s life slips away and the daughter endures the savage onslaught that transforms a family’s safe space into a crime scene. Isa’s shock lingers, a quiet aftermath that leaves the once-familiar home fractured, its walls echoing with the memory of what happened and the memory of those who did not survive the night.