Trailer
Plot summary
On Thanksgiving in Conyers, Pennsylvania, the Dover and Birch families gather for dinner. Afterward, six-year-old Anna Dover and Joy Birch disappear; they had been playing on a parked RV. Detective Loki traces the vehicle and arrests its driver, Alex Jones. Alex has the IQ of a ten-year-old and rarely speaks, and the RV holds no forensic evidence that the girls were inside. His polygraph is inconclusive, and the police prepare to release him. Anna's father, Keller Dover, loses faith in the investigation. He abducts Alex at gunpoint and holds him in an abandoned building, with Joy's father, Franklin Birch, drawn into the questioning.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Prisoners (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Aaron Guzikowski wrote the script for the 2009 Annual Black List, basing it on a short story of his own about "a father whose kid was struck by a hit-and-run driver and then puts this guy in a well in his backyard", partly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".
- Once Denis Villeneuve was brought onto the project, Timothée Chalamet auditioned unsuccessfully for a role. The two eventually worked together anyway, with Chalamet playing Paul Atreides in Villeneuve's Dune trilogy.
- The MPAA originally rated the film NC-17 "for substantial disturbing violent content and explicit images"; after being edited it was re-rated R "for disturbing violent content including torture, and language throughout".
- After Guzikowski wrote the spec script, many actors and directors entered and exited the project, including actors Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio and directors Antoine Fuqua and Bryan Singer.
