Lacking even the compelling ‘how-can-this-get-any-worse’ quality that sometimes accompanies films of a monumental awfulness, Trapped sucks its audience into an entertainment-free black hole like very few movies in recent memory. The gripping tale of a happy couple whose cute lickle daughter gets kidnapped for ransom by a sinister psychopath and his associates, Trapped bears all the signs of having been scripted by an illiterate chimp on ketamine, while the awfulness of the acting defies conception or description.

The roll of dishonour is headed up by Kevin Bacon (not the first black mark on Mr. Bacon’s erratic CV, and surely not the last) who plays the head kidnapper with spectacular lack of subtlety, while Charlize Theron is in equally distressingly dire form as the wife and mom kidnapped by Bacon’s crew. Local hero Stuart Townsend does himself no favours at all in a ludicrously-written role as a scientist who’s invented a drug that paralyses people (purely to advance the plot along with ridiculous ease), while it comes as little surprise that Courtney Love doesn’t exactly bail the rest of them out.

Mind-numbingly painful stuff.