I saw this film at the Imagine film festival 2013 in Amsterdam. The plot seems mildly interesting at first, about a taxi driver (Bob) who takes women to his remote house, murders them and buries them in his cellar. The screaming and blood spraying involved in such activities, have been filmed many times before. This time, however, there is an original twist when he brings home a 9 year old boy (Tim) along with his mother, kills and buries the latter (as usual), but he keeps Tim to clean his house and prepare meals. Of course, Tim tries to escape but he fails and thus gets tied to a long chain, so that he can move through the house and perform his daily chores, among others burying women after Bob slaughters them.
This involuntarily form of cohabitation goes on for some 10 years. We see the young Tim change into an adolescent version. Bob tries to educate him by giving encyclopedia and other text books to read. Tim remains devoid of any external contacts, unable to leave the house while being retrained by his chain (hence the film title).
In the meantime, the usual process of collecting and killing women goes on. By means of flashbacks we observe that Bob has a background not only of being mistreated as a child, but was also forced to have sex with his mother. We don't get all the gory details about his past, but in several dreams we get the picture what sort of things happened in his youth, and apparently deformed his character for life.
The story becomes interesting when Bob makes serious attempts to interest Tim for the female body, and to arouse his sexual desires. Bob lets Tim choose from a photo book to find out which type he finds most attractive, then collects one looking like that example, all being a setup in the hopes that Tim and the girl have sex together. But Tim fails to settle down with her and let nature take its course. He is aware that Bob is watching every move via a camera in that room. Even worse, Bob interferes some of the time when things are not progressing fast enough. When Bob insists that he should grab the chance to explore the female body, Tim rebuts that he knows that inside and outside from books, obviously missing the point Bob wants to make. Though the girl tries to make the best of the situation and wants to help him a bit, this scene ends with blood since handling a knife is what Tim knows best.
I refrain from revealing how the story continues from this point, if only to prevent spoiling some surprising turns of events. For example, there comes a time when Tim is able to set himself free, and even meets his father who (of course) did not expect to even see him again after being lost for 10 years. Unexpectedly, this encounter does not lead to a happy family re-union, and there is a reason for that (see for yourself). As a result, Tim is thrown back on his own devices. We suspect (but that end is left open) that his only choice is to continue Bob's secret operations, and to make a fresh start with "volunteering" a new helper.
All in all, the original plot is employed very well. There were absolutely no dull moments, in spite of the constrained setting where most of the action takes place (there are very few outdoor scenes). The tension was very well spread over the running time. I consider this a formidable achievement with a cast consisting mainly of Bob and Tim, where all other roles are no more than short appearances. A few scenes were even hilarious, in spite of the dark circumstances, for instance when they play quartets with the ID cards of the women they killed. I gave the maximum score for the audience award when leaving the theater. Not all my co-viewers in the festival agree, however, since this film ended on a mediocre 21st place (out of 46) on the rating list.
