Co-written by Mapi Piña and Vanessa Soto

Red lips emit sinister whispering into the ears of a captive female character. “Oh Allie…” the lips continuously whisper. The fear emanating from the captive is palpable—a perfect opening to a thriller.

Stefanie Scott as Allie

“Caught” throws you into the middle of the storyline —with a kidnapping—and tells you the backstory later. After the opening scene we begin to see the layers of Allie’s life peel away. We learn that the protagonist, Allie (Stefanie Scott) is on her high school’s track team but is kicked off after her coach discovers her grades have been slipping.

The movie proceeds to show us that Allie works after school as a waitress at her mom’s (Mary B. McCann) restaurant, a job she not only detests, but is not particularly skilled at. While her job has its setbacks, the upside was meeting the dapper Mr. Jason (Sam Page) while he was out on a business dinner —an encounter assumed to be a few months prior to Allie’s kidnapping.
On one particular shift Allie goes against her mother’s wishes and leaves work early, practically prancing into the hands of her abductor. We soon discover that there are two abductors: a sister team comprised of Sabrina (Anna Camp) —Jason’s wife, and Paige (Amelia Rose Blair), Sabrina’s sister. As if Allie’s day couldn’t get any worse after getting kicked off her team, she gets snatched by a wife she apparently didn’t know existed and learns that Jason is just another chiseled-face adulterer.

Generally speaking, if you’ve seen one kidnapping-gone-wrong storyline, you’ve pretty much seen them all. One character just wants to teach another a lesson with a harmless prank that goes too far; it’s a genre with very little variation, but screenwriter Marcy Holland shatters those stereotypes in “Caught.”

After tying Allie to a chair in the attic Sabrina bounces through the house with manic glee, spouting lines like “Do you think you could waterboard someone in a Jacuzzi?” The plan quickly goes amiss when Justin (Sam Page) comes home early and Allie kicks her way out of the attic. While a lesser screenplay would drag out this moment until the end of the film, Holland’s writing shakes things up by having the confrontation between all the characters occur within the first act. Thirty minutes into the film, Justin discovers Allie in the house, Allie finds out Justin is married and Justin realizes what Sabrina has done, and having everything out on the table so early on adds a depth to each character’s performance.

In fact, where the film succeeds most is in its character development. Anna Camp’s performance adds dimension to a character that could have easily been played as a flat, vengeful housewife and makes her understandable, almost sympathetic and undeniably hilarious.

Overall, the film has a few suspense-filled scenes, but goes the way of a comedic thriller more than anything and the pacing was sometimes inconsistent. Laughter poured out of the mouths of a few audience members, mainly as a reaction to the difficult-to-believe scenes and the “Did she really just say that?” lines from a few of the characters—mainly Camp.

No spoilers on how it all ends, you’ll definitely want to see this one for yourself.

“Caught” premiered at the LA Film Festival June 12th, 2015

Directed by: Maggie Kiley

Produced by: Jennifer Westin

Written by: Marcy Holland

Starring: Stefanie Scott, Anna Camp, Amelia Rose Blair, Sam Page

Grade: B

Last night’s episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” involved a strict reverend, some crazy girl antics in the form of Cassie (guest star Anna Camp), and some role playing with Daphne and Marshall.

After an “Indiana Jones” flashback starring Ted and Barney on a quest to make the wisest choice, Barney and the gang wanted to make sure Ted found his wedding weekend fling. Unfortunately (or, in the long run, fortunately?), Ted made a poor decision in choosing straight-forward Cassie. Just as soon as Cassie seemed to be the perfect candidate (she told Ted, “Let’s have meaningless sex first, and flirt later”), she got fired from her job where she found out everyone hated her. To make matters worse, she was rebounding from a break-up. Things continued to fall downhill as Ted became more of a shoulder to cry on for Cassie, than her “meaningless sex” partner. Ted’s sad attempt to seal the deal with Cassie, or even second choice Grace, just proved one thing: WE WANT MORE OF THE MOTHER. Surely Ted was hoping for a fling during the weekend to get his mind off Robin, and if we didn’t know that the wedding would bring him to The Mother, this would just be depressing.

Meanwhile, we learn that Barney and Robin hired a strict, grumpy reverend, played by guest star Edward Herrmann, to officiate their wedding. The choice was because his church had “cute coming out the wazoo.” Unfortunately, to convince him that they were not the typical “promiscuous, boozy couple” from the city, the two lied about how they met. Instead of telling their complicated, and well, promiscuous story, the couple pretend to have Lily and Marshall’s story. Cue to an amazing flashback of how Lily and Marshall met, but with Robin and Barney taking their places respectively. Lily then had to tell the reverend her story of how she and Marshall met. Cue to an equally amazing flashback of how Robin and Barney met, with Lily as Robin and Marshall as a suited-up Barney.

Barney and Robin eventually come clean to the reverend — in detail. The mention of sex with hundreds of women, cheating, sex in the church, proved too much for the reverend to handle. The reverend who repeatedly said, “This is killing me,” in fact died, probably before hearing Barney tell Robin, “ “I love our story. Sure it’s messy, but it’s the story that got us here.”

Somewhere on the road to Farhampton, Marshall and Daphne rehearsed ways to tell Lily about his judgeship offer. Some mildly funny scenes happened with Daphne’s voice over Lily. But really, enough with this and get Marshall back with the gang. Marshall let it slip to Daphne that he had taken the job already, without talking to Lily. So, Daphne took things into her own hands, and texted Lily the new information. And then Marshall’s phone rang.

So the episode ended with two cliffhangers: What will Lily say to Marshall, and who will officiate the wedding?

Pitch Perfect movie poster (courtesy of Universal Pictures)

While the title may recall thoughts of the TV show “Glee,” “Pitch Perfect” has all of the catchy beats and snazzy dance numbers without the PSA feel.

In fact, it’s established very early on in the film that the similarities between the popular TV show and “Pitch Perfect end with the singing. A cameo from Christopher Mintz-Plasse during an audition scene reveals the following jab, “This isn’t a high school club where you can sing and dance your way through any social issue or confused sexuality.”

The kids from Barden University aren’t here to preach, they’re here to sing some kick ass songs and have a good time. The film is director Jason Moore’s first film project (he’s usually seen on Broadway doing productions like “Avenue Q”). It’s also writer Kay Cannon’s (“30 Rock”) first venture into film writing.

Loosely, based on the non-fiction book by Mickey Rapkin, “Pitch Perfect” feels like a musical version of “Mean Girls.”

The film follows Beca (Anna Kendrick), an antisocial aspiring DJ, through her first year in college. Beca is perfectly content hanging out at the campus radio station or mixing beats alone in her room, but her father has other plans. Upset by her lack of effort to fit in, he offers her a deal. He tells her that if she gives the college thing a real chance and still doesn’t like it by the end of the year, then he will pay for her to move to Los Angeles.

Suddenly Beca does a complete 180 and decides to join an all girl A Capella group, the Barden Bellas. Normally the Bellas wouldn’t give Beca and her alt girl persona a chance, but they are in desperate need for new talent after a very embarrassing incident at nationals. Aubrey (Anna Camp), the overbearing leader of the group, has a bad habit of throwing up when she’s nervous (you can use your imagination to figure out how that scene went) and after “the incident” most of the Bellas leave the group.

Thus, Aubrey and her sidekick, Chloe (Brittany Snow) end up with a new, more unconventional group. The new Bellas include an array of memorable characters, each with her own archetype. Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean) is a lesbian with lots of swag and a gambling problem. Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) is the soft-spoken Asian-American anime character. Lily is so quiet none of the other girls can ever hear what she says, which gives her the opportunity to say things like “I ate my twin in the womb.” Stacie (Alexis Knapp) is the resident slut…she says so herself. And finally “Fat Amy” (Rebel Wilson) is the loud-mouthed blonde who created the derogatory nickname as a way of beating others to the punch.

Aubrey takes her girls and tries to whip them into shape for competition season–Aubrey’s main goal in life is to make it back to nationals, redeem herself and beat the Treblemakers (the school’s all male A Capella group and their biggest rival).

The rivalry between the Bellas and the Treblemakers runs so deep that the girls are forbidden from having any kind of relationship with them. Any Bella who is caught having a romantic relationship with a Treblemaker is immediately kicked off the team. It kind of puts Beca in an awkward situation since she has instant chemistry Jesse (Skylar Astin), a young Dane Cook look-alike who plans on becoming a film composer. Their friendship may be forbidden, but we all know exactly how things are going to end up from the moment they set eyes on each other.

Therein lies the only real problem with this film– everything is extremely predictable.  We know that eventually Beca will decide that being part of a team is better than hanging out in her room all day. We know that Aubrey’s iron fisted way of leading the Bellas isn’t going to work out. We know that Jesse and Beca will have a “we beat all the odds” romantic kiss at the end, but somehow that is all irrelevant.

The musical numbers are so wonderfully arranged they make even the most anti-choir viewer want to get up and sing. Really, the mashups in this film are 10 times better than anything you’ve ever seen on “Glee.” With a broad soundtrack ranging from Blackstreet to Bruno Mars, to Ace of Base and The Bangles, there’s a little something for everyone in there.

Kay Cannon’s writing balances out the fuzziness from all the singing perfectly–most of the jokes are snarky and well timed. Although there are a few eye roll inducing lines that the film could have done without. For example, all the characters have a strange obsession with using “aca” in front everything—“we’re going to have aca-babies,” “that’s aca-awesome,” aca-why-don’t-you-shut-the-hell-up.

Aca-annoyingness aside, the film is 113 minutes of fun and laughs that you don’t want to end.

“Pitch Perfect” hits theaters on Sept. 28.

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