Capture Kill Release begins in the middle of a devious plot: young lovers Jenn and Farhang (played by Jennifer Fraser and Farhang Ghajar) are toying with the idea of murdering a random person.  Their intentions and motives are deliberately foggy, which makes the film’s fly-on-the-wall experience more unsettling, disturbing, and impossible to look away – this is not for the faint of heart.

As the story rolls along, the audience realizes that Jenn has more investment in this morbid curiosity.  Fraser is phenomenal.  She portrays Jenn as someone who is funny and easily likeable, and skillfully uses those charms to create a twisted personality that’s blindly nary a conscience.

Capture Kill Release is one of the more interesting found footage horrors I’ve seen recently because its filmmakers (Brian Allan Stewart and Nick McAnulty) realize the cause and effect of careful pacing.  The film acts as an unhinged in-your-face study of serial killers, and movie goers encounter the haunting results of sick apathy.  When viewers are finally exposed to the extreme violence, it legitimately shocks and even nauseates us.

Although Stewart and McAnulty are well aware of how layered their film is, their repetitive “torture porn” techniques in the final act suggest that they either didn’t know how to end Capture Kill Release or they misunderstood what’s truly scary about the story.  Put it this way: as soon as the audience becomes as numb to violence as Jenn, the impact of this otherwise impressive flick becomes watered down.

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Capture Kill Release screens at the Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival on: 

Friday, November 25 at 9:30 p.m. @ Toronto’s Cineplex Yonge and Dundas

For more information on the festival, visit the official BITS webpage here.

Buy tickets here.

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The Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival: @BITSFilmFest
Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie