A single mom tries to break free from a mysterious organization that has abducted her.

Single mom Renee Morgan (Noomi Rapace) has her hands full with her young son who’d rather read comic books than do his math homework, and her ex-husband who swears at her in the voicemails he leaves her.  Charming.

But something weird is going on: we see numerous point-of-view shots from a hidden camera in her house, and two shady people in an unmarked car plant something on Renee’s car. Is she a spy? Is the government after her?

Renee takes her son to the Ex’s for the weekend and then heads out to go skydiving (sure, let’s just go with that). She is followed closely behind by the two shady people we saw earlier (and I do mean closely: they are literally 20 feet behind her the entire time, until they press a little button on a remote, and the planted device blows out her tire. When she stops to fix it, she is attacked from behind, tased, wrapped in duct tape, and handcuffed into the back of a van.

No explanation, no hints, nothing.

She is driven far away to a grubby building, strapped to a gurney, and rolled into one of many dingy, dirty rooms.  There she is subjected to a barrage of questions about things like her height, weight, allergies, phobias, etc.  It seems the people asking her these questions (including gruff Michael Chiklis as Bald Man) already know the answers, and have been secretly observing her for a long time.  They inject her with some serums, and subject her to more and more stressful tests, trying to provoke or encourage some kind of response (that might have something to do with her fears?), but nobody is clear about what they want from her.  Renee is confused and angry and desperate to get out of there and get back to her son.

Director Steven Shainberg (Secretary) does a great job establishing the central conceit of the movie, and really tightens the suspense screws while Renee  has to endure her stay at the…hospital? Warehouse? Underground asylum? We are right there with her as she is questioned over and over, poked and prodded with needles and injected with sinister liquids. She is confused and agitated and nervous and terrified and, just like her, we want some answers to the huge mysteries overwhelming her/us.

Unfortunately, this high level of suspense and mystery needs a huge yet logical payoff that wraps up all the weird threads into a satisfying end package, and instead the last thirty minutes or so of Rupture just kind of fizzle out and add up to a big shrug from me. After all the movie’s cards are fanned out on the table, and I put all the parts together, I just thought, “That’s it? That’s what they’re doing? Meh.”  It made me doubly upset because of how good the first hour is, and how invested I was in the well-being of Renee.

Speaking of Renee, Noomi Rapace does a fabulous job here. Her Renee is resourceful and determined, trying her hardest get out of her predicament, but also wanting to understand the circumstances of her kidnapping. It’s a tough role, requiring a lot of emotional highs and lows, and she is intensely invested in it, making her the focus of every scene she’s in (which is pretty much every scene).  She is the center of Rupture, and she’s great.

I wish I could wholeheartedly recommend Rupture. It’s a shame the finale of the film did not live up to the promise of the beginning.