YMMV / Prisoners

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• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Keller a psychopath using his own paranoia to justify his torture of Alex or is he just a desperate man going too far to save his kid?
• Award Snub: There was a lot of hype for the film to be a big contender at the Oscars, especially in the acting category, but only wound up with a nomination for Roger Deakins' cinematography. Which it lost. Hell, Hugh Jackman didn't get a nomination anywhere for his performance.
• Awesome Music:
  • The film's minimalist score by Jóhann Jóhannsson is quite haunting, especially "The Candlelight Vigil".
  • Radiohead's "Codex" makes a cameo in the final scene, and it does quite a bit to add to the melancholic atmosphere even though it's being played off a small speaker.
• Creepy Awesome: A musical version thanks to Soundtrack Dissonance in the opening scene. The movie takes the uplifting gospel song "Put Your Hand in the Hand" and makes it incredibly creepy.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The main suspect in the mass child murder case is named Alex Jones. The parents of victims torture him. Almost at the same time the film came out, Alex Jones became infamous for his baseless assertions that an actual mass child murder case was fictional. Thankfully, the parents of the victims successfully sued him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: At one point, Alex sings the "Batman smells" rendition of "Jingle Bells". Fast forward eight years later, and Alex is now the Big Bad of a Batman film. In fact, said-Big Bad is comparable to Alex, except being a killer in the latter's case. Furthermore, Keller once angrily admonishes him with "no more riddles". Take a guess as to what villain he plays in said film.
• Jerkass Woobie: Keller does some pretty horrible things to Alex and even starts taking up drinking, but the man is just desperate to find his kid.
• Memetic Badass: Detective Loki has become this amongst fans of the film for his unbreakable will and determination in finding the missing girls no matter how much it destroys him, his eventual success in finding them and taking down the one behind it all, and for his awesome haircut.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Holly crossed it a long time ago when it is revealed that she and her husband were behind the kidnappings and murders of the kids.
  • One could argue that what Keller does to Alex qualifies, even if he did it to find the girls. Franklin certainly seems to think so in-universe.
• Narm: Some people find Holly Jones' motivation for kidnapping and killing children, which is to destroy their faith in God, to be a bit melodramatic for an otherwise grounded and realistic movie.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • This is most likely the closest thing to a successful movie adaptation of Heavy Rain that will ever be made.
  • Along with Logan, this movie is also probably the closest we'll ever get to see Hugh Jackman as a live-action Joel.
  • Due to the movie centering on a protagonist's obsession with the disappearance of a loved one and having him confront the Big Bad, drink a drugged beverage and end up buried underground with little to no hope of survival by the movie's end, this movie can be considered a much better remake of The Vanishing than the actual American remake of The Vanishing.
• The Woobie:
  • Alex, especially when it's revealed that he was actually innocent (or at least not fully aware) of the kidnapping, and yet gets brutally tortured for it. Then at the end it's revealed that he was actually kidnapped when he was really young.
  • Bob Taylor also ends up as this. His off-putting mannerisms and poor living conditions are actually the result of untreated trauma, being a kidnapping survivor himself. Eventually, the pressure of Loki's interrogation gets to him, and he shoots himself.

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