SPOILERS

They threw the movie away in the third act!

A very competently-made, suspenseful piece, albeit with some of the whiff of anxiety-exploitation around child abduction that, say, The Pledge has, but impressively and seriously put together. A lot of the revelations are guessable, but it'll keep you watching. Yet - in the end - you may wish you'd spent your time watching something else. Because it doesn't pay off.

There are many holes, but one key howler.

For me, the film makers threw it all away with one piece of "let's go down to that spooky graveyard" plotting.

With a jigsaw puzzle this intricate, everything has to be plausible or it all feels like a confection.

And when Hugh Jackman runs off - alone, actively avoiding the police and preventing them from accompanying him - to confront the abductor, after learning a key piece of information in the hospital, all credibility goes out the window.

HJ's character (Dover) simply has no reason to eschew the police's help once he learns that he has already been at the place where the children are being held. (Which narrows the options right down).

The discovery of one of the missing girls changes everything. And acting on evidence gleaned from her is not something the police would resist.

A bunch of talented actors and film makers let all their efforts go to waste due to this failure of plotting and motivation. It takes you right out of the movie.

Of course, the whistle contrivance eventually makes it feel as if maybe this action doesn't seal Dover's fate (though the ending's ambiguity is a bit of a cop out). But - crucially - this piece of implausible action means that by the end we've kind of bailed.

As for the aftertaste, the more you think about it, the more the 'plausible offscreen action' on which this kind of plot and edit relies, is inadequate.

If you watch the flashback, which shows the first captive escaping, carefully you'll see that nasty Melissa Leo is held back by a hooded figure, which is how the little girl gets away. We see beige-hooded-coat-guy grab her from behind as she pursues the little girl, and then cut to the girl running and running.

Now, there's only one beige hoodie guy in the film - it's creepy Bob Taylor, who by the time we see the flashback, has killed himself in police custody.

So: why? Why did he kill himself? And/or why did he help little Joy Birch escape?

If he meant for her to escape, why not just tell the cops and be a hero?

And if he feels guilty enough to kill himself (why?), what was his motivation to save the girl?

None of this is made even remotely clear.

We could speculate that it's because he's a loon due to long exposure to LSD (if we think he's another abductee of Melissa Leo's character and her late husband - and this is suggested by the snakes he had; Leo's character says her husband kept snakes). Or maybe he feels guilty that he only managed to help one girl flee.

But at this point in the story all he has to give is factual account of what happened and he'd be OK.

Likewise, why does Alex withhold the information?

Presumably we're supposed to presume that Holly Jones (Leo) had some intense brainwashy psychological hold over both boys. But that's a lot of presuming.

So, the plot holes got in the way here. And, as is often the case, the film-makers papered over the cracks with some ambiguity and vagueness which the less discerning will take for artful and intentional ambiguity which makes the film soooo much more interesting.

But it's not. It's just shoddy plotting dressed up.