Characters / Prisoners

Keller Dover

Keller Dover

Played by: Hugh Jackman

A deeply religious man who runs a struggling carpentry business.

• Anti-Hero: He is a deconstruction of the Vigilante Man and Exalted Torturer types. In fact, he goes so far into He Who Fights Monsters territory he almost becomes a Villain Protagonist.
• Berserker Tears: Cries at himself angrily while sitting in Loki's office, contemplating about taking matters into his own hands.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Whether he was found in the ground by Loki or not is left to the viewer to decide.
• Byronic Hero: Taking extreme measures, he does whatever he feels necessary to find his missing daughter while being uncooperative with the police investigation.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Very often out of anger or impatience.

• Crazy Survivalist: He believes in being prepared for social crises by stocking his basement in the house with canned and packaged food, medical supplies, fuel, and bags of lye.

• Exalted Torturer: Believes this to be the only choice to get Alex to reveal where his missing daughter is. Holly is hoping he'll do this, as part of her sick, twisted scheme to take revenge on God.
• Faith–Heel Turn: Subverted. The entire purpose of the Big Bad kidnapping children is to make parents lose faith in God, and as Dover is left trapped in the hole he continues to pray for his daughter's safety.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Invoked when the Big Bad admits she abducts children to see their parents become like this.
• Hot-Blooded: He's overly eager in trying to find his missing daughter and her friend, to the point of outright kidnapping Alex and interrogating him.
• I Will Find You: His daughter.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: He believes that his torture of Alex will help him find his missing daughter and her friend.
• Knight Templar Parent: Over the course of the film, he went from being appropriately paranoid about his missing daughter and her friend, to outright kidnapping Alex Jones, just because he suspects that the man is responsible for their kidnapping.
• Locked in the Dungeon: His final fate, although he might have been found by Loki at the end.
• No Indoor Voice: His yelling during his interrogation of Alex.

• Survivalist Stash: His house has a basement filled with supplies in case of the breakdown of society.
• Torture Technician: He's turned into this about halfway through the movie. More or less. He's not very good at it.
  "We can't hurt him anymore without killing him, so this is the only way."
• Thrown Down a Well: By the Big Bad.
• Tragic Hero: Based on the ending whether he was found trapped in the hole or not.
• Vigilante Man: Deconstructed, he nails and brutally tortures a man for kidnapping his daughter. Said man is ultimately innocent.
• Villain Protagonist: He can be considered this due to him torturing Alex Jones out of his obsessive belief that he's the one who kidnapped his daughter.

Detective Loki

Detective Loki

Played by: Jake Gyllenhaal

• Break the Badass: When Taylor kills himself in front of him with his gun.
• Byronic Hero: He has several characteristics that made him fit the bill of being Byronic: arrogant, brooding, moody, sophisticated, mysterious, passionate and rebellious.
• Character Tics: He squints his eyes a lot possibly from the amount of stress he deals with.
• Cowboy Cop: He is a rebellious detective with occasional violence against the suspects he's facing against.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Dialogue implies that he was a victim of sexual abuse as a child in the Huntington Boys Home.

• Good Is Not Soft: He is a benevolent detective at heart, but won't go easy on suspects.
• Hot-Blooded: It goes hand in hand with his Cowboy Cop antics. He's an overly arrogant detective who's brash, loud-mouthed and easily angered.
• Informed Ability: An early conversation with the wife sets him up to be The Ace, but he ends up spending most of the movie bumbling about chasing false leads, ignoring obvious clues, handling sensitive situations like an incompetent and generally messing up everything he touches, up to and including convincing (innocent) suspects to kill themselves.
• Meaningful Name: "Loki", as in mischief. He was a mischievous boy when he was young. Hence, his time spent in the Huntington Boys Home.
• Only One Name: His first name is never used. Only in a quick shot of his badge can you see that his full name is David Wayne Loki.
• Tantrum Throwing: His response to Taylor's suicide is to smash a keyboard onto his desk.
• Unscrupulous Hero: He has no problem exploiting a suspect's subconscious to get his information, and he tends to be brooding, cynical, and standoffish, mostly to his suspects.

Franklin Birch

Franklin Birch

Played By: Terrence Howard

• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: To Keller. Franklin is deeply upset by their actions.

Nancy Birch

Nancy Birch

Played By: Viola Davis

Grace Dover

Grace Dover

Played By: Maria Bello

• Despair Event Horizon: She becomes distraught and bedridden after the kidnapping, remaining in her bed for much of the film.

Alex Jones

Alex Jones

Played By: Paul Dano

• Ambiguous Disorder: It's unclear what's wrong with him, exactly. It's never mentioned if he's autistic, has some kind of condition or what. It's likely that he's simply the product of constant abuse and fear throughout his life. It's also why the police know he can't be the culprit, since a man with the intelligence of a ten-year old isn't exactly a scheming kidnapper able to outwit the cops.
• Butt-Monkey: NOT played for laughs.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He's on the receiving end of this, courtesy of Keller. Holly and her husband weren't far behind either.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears big, buggy aviator-type glasses. Averted; he's not the killer.
• Manchild: Comes with having the mind of a child.
• Loners Are Freaks: Ultimately averted, although he's damaged he's not homicidal.
• Psychopathic Man Child: Whether or not he's one of these is the big question. He isn't.
• Red Herring: He's one for the audience and for Keller. He's such an obvious suspect that the audience likely guesses that he's not the captor, but the mystery isn't diluted since Loki has other suspects to chase inefficiently.
• The Quiet One: Can hardly utter more than a few words as a result of his disability and mental trauma from being abducted and abused by Holly all those years. Keller's actions don't help him in the slightest.
• The Stoic: Alex doesn't have much to say, and he remains generally impassive.

Bob Taylor

Bob Taylor

Played By: David Dastmalchian

• Animal Motifs: Snakes.
• Ate His Gun: When he grabs a cop's gun, he doesn't shoot at any of them; He puts it in his mouth and pulls the trigger.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: He was a former victim of the Jones couple driven to madness after only a few weeks of abuse.
• Big Bad: Subverted. He's just a copy cat to the real killer, Holly.
• Jack the Ripoff: At first it looks like he's the culprit, but it turns out he was just a previous kidnapping victim who survived, but went insane from the experience and started imitating the serial killer without actually killing anyone.

• Red Herring: The way he looks, what his house looks like and other evidence give off the impression he's the killer, but alas, he is not.
• Sanity Slippage: When we first see him, it's obvious something's not right. And when we gets arrested by the police, he jumps at the opportunity to kill himself.
• Serial Killer: Subverted. He was imitating the real killings.
• Walking Spoiler: He's just a Red Herring to throw off the audience of who the real killer is.

The Killer (Spoilers)

Holly Jones

Played By: Melissa Leo

• Abusive Parents: Was one to Alex. See Mama Bear.
• Big Bad: She kidnapped the girls, and has been kidnapping children and murdering them for years with her husband as part of her 'crusade against God'.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's initially just an irritated but essentially good-natured mother trying to protect her son. It's all just a facade and she's actually a kidnapper and murder of children who did it all, along with her husband.
• Card-Carrying Villain: She fully admits to 'waging a war against God'.
• Despair Event Horizon: See Evil Stole My Faith.
• Evil All Along: A nice lady, she ain't.

• Evil Old Folks: She and her husband for decades have been kidnapping and murdering children as part of a "crusade against God".
• Evil Stole My Faith: Invoked as she lost her faith once losing her child and continues to kill other children so their parents become the same.
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: "Make sure they cremate me. I don't want to be buried in some damn box."
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: This child-killer wears a pair of glasses that help to enhance her depraved nature after the reveal.
• Mama Bear: Supposedly for Alex. Later averted, she abducted him as a child and abused him.
• Motive Rant: She delivers one to Keller that also mixes Evil Gloating.
  Holly Jones: Making children disappear is the war we wage with God. Makes people lose their faith, turns them into demons like you. I had to slow down since my husband disappeared, but I do what I can.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Her name is the name of a child kidnapped and murdered in Canada.
• Rage Against the Heavens: Her entire motivation is to turn people away from their faith in God.
• Serial Killer: With her husband, she's been killing children for years.
• The Sociopath: She shows no remorse over her kidnapping and killing of other parents' children. She's also able to put on a facade to avoid suspicion.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Just listen to her how she describes her atrocities. She makes them sound like a part of her morning routine.
• Suicide by Cop: Chooses this when Loki confronts her.
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about her character without giving away the twist of the film.
• Would Hurt a Child: She's a Serial Killer of children.

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