Director: Rick Lancaster
MPAA Rating: NR
The Abduction of Zack Butterfield isn’t the type of film that can easily be explained to someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing it. At its core, it’s a kidnap thriller, but there’s so much going on in this movie that defies any type of logic, character development or cohesive narrative structure that it becomes tough to accurately convey how ridiculous this film truly is.
TJ Plunkett stars as the title character of Zack Butterfield, an all-star 15-year-old kid who is a super athlete, a tae kwon do champ and a hit with the ladies. One day, while on his daily run, Zack gets kidnapped by an unusually good-looking psycho brandishing a gun. The woman, played by Brett Helsham, turns out to be a mentally ill woman named April, who decides she wants to cultivate the perfect man by nabbing him up as a boy. She handcuffs him to the bed and opens an aluminum briefcase revealing a sweet-looking hemp necklace that has been laced with C4 and a remote detonator.
Zack decides to make the most of things and get on April’s good side by complimenting her cooking, doing chores around the house and having sex with her. Can Zack escape from Alice’s clutches before she goes all Misery on him?
While the idea of a beautiful young woman kidnapping a teen boy in order to make him the perfect mate is interesting in theory, the execution feels more in line with an episode of SVU than an actual feature-length film. Director Rick Lancaster seems to be trying to say something with the film, but it never fully comes across, as any semblance of a message gets muddied under bad performances and a weak script.
Much of the plot seems frivolous and unnecessary, like the extended conversation between Zack’s mom and his girlfriend about some kid in her school that got in trouble. Or the scene early on in the film where Zack’s mom gets him a sweet pair of shades and then we see them fall to the ground when he gets abducted. Later, we see two inept FBI agents searching the area but they never find anything, and in the end, the sunglasses play no part in his rescue. (So why bother spending time on them?) It’s odd things like this that pad the movie to a runtime that feels bloated, despite only clocking in at an hour and a half.
There’s also the angle that April is mentally ill due to her time in Iraq and having to take care of her alcoholic stepfather. This is explored almost entirely through exposition and lends almost nothing to the story. Are we supposed to feel empathy for her? Is she supposed to be a product of a male-dominated society that made her this way? Or is this an examination of the effects that war can have on one’s psyche? Of course, all of this could be left open for interpretation, but after watching the film, you’ll realize it’s entirely too shallow for any of these thought experiments.
One highlight however, is the performance of TJ Plunkett as Zack. He does a good job; he just doesn’t have a lot to work with. Brett Helsham gives a serviceable performance as April, but again, the odd script makes her character seem almost cartoonish.
The Abduction of Zack Butterfield had the potential to be a fascinating psychological thriller, but it ends up being a bogged-down drag of a film that is only mildly entertaining and too often unintentionally funny.
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The Abduction of Zack Butterfield – Trailer from Thunder Hill Pictures on Vimeo.
