10×10 (2024)

10×10

The initial chapters of this thriller seem like many others I have watched before in terms of their look and feel. It is not the total number that matters but the sense that it was too many times. There, at a local venue for some coffee, Cathy (Kelly Reilly) sits beside Lewis (Luke Evans), as he will soon become known to her. She leaves, and he follows. On her way to the gym, Cathy listens to Christian radio station (here acting like Chekhov’s gun in act one). After all, Cathy is already at her car listening on Christian Radio while driving towards the gym.

At the gym, she gives a haughty response when another female’s sweater seems to imply something about how sexually attractive their yoga instructor is. And out in parking lot after Cathy has been left alone by herself; Lewis pulls out his pistol on her, hogties her with duct tape over mouth and throws into boot of trunk.

He takes her to his very swank Home Of Modernist Design facility which is off the beaten path and locks Cathy up in a 10×10 room having padding walls that are four feet thick and completely sound proofed. He has one question for her: what is your name? Instead she screams, just as predicted by him.

So how come another man tortures woman scenario again? There might be something making sense out of his actions regardless of how much poorly he acts. He doesn’t want to touch her body or take any cash from Cathy. “We can get down to business” if she co-operates with him said Lewis. But what kind of business is that? He doesn’t say but instead tells Ewing Suzy through Clarke Noel Suzi we didn’t want an abbreviated movie.

Lewis’ skillful construction work does not allow them stay at 10×10 for long because he cannot consider himself a mastermind who knows everything about crime except practical experience, since it was only after he abducted Cathy, who always finds a way of momentarily slipping away from him so that Lewis could beat her again and put in the place made specially for him. I don’t want to give too many plot points here. Even though I feel strongly this isn’t a film that should be seen, I cannot rob you of your choice to watch this movie unspoiled

What I can only say is that around the time of the “bull rushing out of a slaughterhouse” story, I thought to myself, “His motivation for this abduction had better be grand.” It is not. Why would a woman make a movie with a misogynistic kidnapping premise? after all, about 15% of it is about Ms. Reilly getting beaten the stuffing out of her. And so it does through reversing roles in the text.

While it flips on to another common chauvinist tendency: that is, being deceived by Jezebel while still remaining Virtuous Male Duped By A Jezebel. Thus by the end of “10×10”, there’s an identifiable class bias; therefore when it needs more bodies, there’s a housekeeper in its mind who ends up taking a bullet instead. (I guess that IS a spoiler. Sorry.)

However director Ewing does show some above-ordinary knowledge of cinematic space hence certain suspense beats produced are not completely inefficient. Hopefully she will develop better taste in scripts though.

Watch 10×10 For Free On Gomovies.