Crushed

When we try to protect young children from finding out how cruel the world can be, it’s not simply about keeping them from getting upset; it’s because they don’t yet have the tools to process it. Such tools are acquired at different rates in different circumstances, but Olivia (Margaux Dietrich) is a sheltered child, her English immigrant father and Thai mother sending her to the best school they can afford and carefully keeping her apart from the lawlessness of Bangkok, where they live. They buy her a kitten for her tenth birthday, and she’s just delighted, naming her Missy. This makes it all the more traumatic, however, when her friend’s teenage brother, thinking it will be funny, shows her crush fetish porn involving a kitten when she’s at a sleepover. When Missy subsequently goes missing, she conflates the two experiences, and since no adult seems to feel as strongly about the situation as she does, takes it upon herself to make a dangerous investigation into the people behind the distressing video.

As most readers will be aware, there is a whole subgenre out there about men who lose their tempers and set out on vicious killing sprees when their daughters are kidnapped, raped or killed. Crushed may look like one of those from the packaging, but it is something very, very different – almost an antidote. When young Olivia’s quest leads to her disappearance, her parents are naturally distraught. Her mother, May (Nattaporn Rawddon), admits, as Olivia herself has done, that she’s not sure she believes in God, but her vicar father, Daniel (Steve Oram), believes strongly that the proper response is to work with the police and pray for her safe return. May walks all around the neighbourhood talking to people, asking what they’ve seen, and putting up missing child posters where the missing cat posters were before. Daniel is her rock, striving to keep them both calm even though, inside, he is struggling.

Viewers, meanwhile, continue to follow Olivia’s journey, as her predicament gradually gets worse. We also get to know her kidnapper, who is a complicated man with his own sense of morality, though he is stretching it to it limits in an effort to be reunited with the child he himself loves. There is also another, far less sympathetic man, a wealthy American, waiting in the wings.

What is interesting here is that Olivia is never objectified. Even in the grimmest of situations, she has a strong individual presence of her own and retains an element of agency. This is important in establishing that neither her kidnapper nor the audience can lose sight of the fact she is a human being, deepening the horror felt by both. There are echoes of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville as we are prompted early on to be alert to the risks in dismissing another person’s potential. It is Olivia who will make a decision which changes everyone else’s life, and which adds a further layer of horror to what we have already witnessed, though for her it is entirely reasonable and morally consistent.

This is a very different kind of role for Oram, more often positioned as a tyrant and a bully, though he had already established his range through independent productions like Mind-Set. The challenge for him this time around is to make us appreciate the depth and complexity of a figure more often seen in comedy, a deeply religious man who preaches kindness, sings along with his tuneless flock, holds garden parties and discusses the Christian values in the lyrics of Beatles songs. Daniel’s movement towards moral compromise carries more weight because it happens slowly and without ego.

Although there is a good deal of violence here, it is never shown directly, only implied. The ugliest moments are filtered through the reactions of observers. The worst cruelty often begins as apparent kindness or concern. Olivia is not the only child in peril. Towards the end, we see the city from a distance, a single shaft of light piercing the clouds above whilst the Chao Phraya river coils around it like a fat brown snake. Yet it is largely outsiders who commission and consume the pornography, wealthy tourists who visit to exploit the vulnerable. In Simon Rumley’s film there is no room for purity, and though there might be room for forgiveness, at least for some, everything seems to work against it. It’s a tightly structured, shrewd piece of cinema, and – if you have the stomach for it – well worth checking out.

Reviewed on: 03 Oct 2026