Karla Dyson, a dinner waitress, goes on a relentless pursue towards two kidnappers after they abducted her six-year-old son Frankie at a park's local carnival.
Kidnap provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Karla isn't a badass action hero, but her resourcefulness and pure determination drive her to to hell and back to get her son back.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: The highway cop who doesn't believe Karla that her son's been kidnapped simply asks Karla to just pull over and seems to prioritize arresting her instead of the abductors who just threw tool supplies out on the highway.
- Big Bad: The "neighbor" who claimed he lived next to Terry and Margo for 13 years turns out to be the one in charge of the child abductions that extends over to New York, London, Paris and Dubai. It only took Karla's actions to bring down the entire child trafficking ring in the end.
- Big "NO!": Karla blurts out a lot of these out of frustration over her son having just been abducted and over how stupid the cops are.
- Bittersweet Ending: Karla gets her son back and the child traffickers end up being dealt with, but a lot of innocent people were left injured and some were killed in the process.
- Burger Fool: Karla is a waitress at a pancake diner who has to serve rude and childish customers. Also, her ex-husband's lawyer mocks her for not making much to support a child.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Karla loses her phone almost as soon as her son gets kidnapped.
- Creative Closing Credits: The ending credits are arranged like a home video photo montage, with photos of Karla and Frankie placed between the entries citing the people involved in the movie's production.
- Disappeared Dad: Frankie's dad (who is Karla's ex-husband) doesn't show up on screen due to him and Karla divorcing, but he does help cause Frankie's kidnapping by distracting Karla with a phone call demanding custody of Frankie by legal force.
- Dysfunctional Family: One appears in the diner scene. The fat son makes a fit over not getting his hash browns and the grandmother has Alzheimer's which makes her unable to recognize her own daughter Sophia.
- Happier Home Movie: The film opens with a montage of videos showing Frankie growing up before cutting to the present.
- I Can't Hear You: Said to Karla by a trucker she tried to tell to call the police for her kidnapped son.
- I Never Told You My Name: When Karla meets the unnamed ringleader in the climax, she claims that there are abducted children who are trapped up in a loft by the Vickeys. The ringleader believes Karla and he directly tells both girls to come down. Karla points out she never said how many there were and she never said they were girls, to which the ringleader realizes he has blown his cover that he knew the girls were up there before Karla did. Granted, one of the girls spoke and the ringleader did hear it.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Frankie gets kidnapped by Terry and Margo when Karla briefly loses sight of him at a park carnival, and he's not the first kid in the area to be taken by said couple, as Karla soon finds out.
- Mama Bear: Karla will not give up till her son is safe.
- Man Bites Man: At the end of the in-car fight between Karla and Margo, Karla does this to make Margo lose control of the steering wheel and fall out of Karla's car.
- No Name Given: A lot of characters with speaking roles in the film go unnamed, including the third and final kidnapper.
- Oh, Crap!: When hearing police sirens because Karla called them to the location where her son and two other young girls are being held hostage, the Vickys' "neighbor" reacts this when he realizes he has to pretend he's not a kidnapper himself.
- Police Are Useless: The cops in this movie are incompetent at helping Karla track down her son. One cop doesn't believe her story that her son's been kidnapped before getting either killed or injured by the kidnappers through vehicular manslaughter.
- Rule of Three: There are three abductors, and three child victims including Frankie.
- Sex Slave: The Vickeys have two young Caucasian girls imprisoned for this purpose.
- Tap on the Head: Karla strikes the final kidnapper with a shovel, seemingly knocking him out. Although, the closing news report's indication that he died alongside Terry and Margo implies the blow outright killed him.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?:
- We never know if the highway cop on a motorcycle survived getting run over by the kidnappers.
- The unfortunate blonde Caucasian woman who got ran over by Terry doesn't seem to get an ambulance, at least onscreen.
- Would Hurt a Child: The film is all about child kidnapping and the sex trafficking of children.
