Early Details and Trailer for The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Steve Barton |

Mar 9, 2010

And another interesting sounding project from the UK landed in our inbox today, this one entitled The Disappearance of Alice Creed. It’s the first feature from writer/director J Blakeson, and there are only three characters in the entire film.

As a bit of background on Blakeson, since 2001 he has worked predominantly as a screenwriter, sometimes in collaboration with James McCarthy. He has written feature scripts across many genres for a number of companies including Mission Pictures, Working Title, and Shine Pictures. Most recently he and McCarthy wrote The Descent: Part 2 for Celador Films.

With regard to The Disappearance of Alice Creed, here’s the synopsis:

Two men – one in his twenties, the other nearer forty, both intensely focused on the task at hand – line the inside of a transit van with plastic. Shopping, they buy a drill, a mattress, and other supplies. In a small flat they assemble a bed for the mattress and staple foam insulation and board to the walls and windows of a bedroom. Then, their meticulous preparations complete, they kidnap a young woman. They drag her from the street into the back of the van and, with a bag over her head and ball gag in her mouth, take her back to the flat, tying her to the bed in the room they have converted into a prison cell.

The kidnappers are Danny (Martin Compston) and Vic (Eddie Marsan), two ex-cons planning to make a mint on the ransom for the young woman. The younger, nervier of the two, Danny defers to the more experienced Vic, who acts with a steely conviction. Their hostage is Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton), daughter of a rich businessman, chosen by Vic and Danny as their passport to a better life. Terrified and immobile at first, it soon becomes clear that Alice isn’t about to let her captors use her as capital without a fight. As determined to escape as Vic and Danny are to succeed, Alice enters into a battle of wills that strains the already fractious relationship between the two men. As the deadline for the exchange draws nearer, all three are brought close to the breaking point, with Vic and Danny’s foolproof plan descending into a desperate struggle for survival.

The film’s quad poster and trailer can be found below along with an early still of Arterton, who also can soon be seen in Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. In describing her reaction to the script, she said, “I’d just come off this big action-adventure movie where I’m playing a princess so I wanted to do something completely different. This was psychological, very modern, and really full on. It was such a page-turner, and I thought, ‘It’d be great to be involved in something where the audience are on the edge of their seats’.”

Here’s hoping she’s right!