Prisoners
supports but also subverts David Icke’s theory of child abuse
Prisoners is a good film. It’s one of those solid, grown-up movies with ensemble casts giving great performances that seem to be ever rarer these days. It also contains two things that made me lean forward with my brow furrowed.
*****SPOILER ALERT*****
First, the detective wears a Masonic ring. Not a big deal, just some clever wardrobe - after all, it’s fairly common knowledge, at least in the UK, that a notable number of police, legal and political professionals are members of the Freemasons. So the detective is a Mason. Yawn. Maybe…
Secondly, at the end, when it turns out that Melissa Leo is the murderer, she says something very powerful:
"Killing children is the war we wage with God. It turns people into demons."
Strong stuff. Compare that to what David Icke says about the ‘global elite’.
That statement in the film mirrors a tremendous amount of conspiracy theory. For many years, researchers have been saying that the ‘global elite’ are Satanic in their practices and use the abuse and killing of children as a way of subverting the course of human development.
One key difference in Prisoners is that while people like Icke think this Satanic child abuse is run by a network of secret societies, principal among them the Freemasons, this film casts the good detective trying to stop this horror as a Freemason. Underlying message becomes ‘Freemasons work to save your children’ rather than Icke’s ‘Freemasons and those like them abduct, abuse and annihilate your children’. Interesting shift.
Having said that, Hugh Jackman’s character trajectory is very clearly along the very lines described in both that quote from the end of the movie and also Icke’s reasoning as to why these abuses are central to controlling people. Simply put, fear and suffering change us and in many ways shunt our development along fairly predictable lines. That’s the main thing about Prisoners - the man who experienced primal doubts about attacking the supposed perpetrator gets his daughter back while the man who flew off the handle ends up in a hole in the ground whistling for help. The detective gets the perp and saves both the child and the transgressing, grieving father. It is a deeply moral film, and at the apex of this moral pyramid is a Freemason, a direct inversion of all claims to the contrary. The detective’s captain is so obnoxious to him that we clearly are meant to sympathise with the detective and not the police establishment. And the detective is named Loki, the Norse trickster god famous for his dark sense of humour and elaborate deceptions. Interesting to say the least.
With the recent revelations regarding Jimmy Saville in the UK, a legacy of child abuse seems to have exposed a so-called ‘VIP paedophile ring’ reaching into quite high echelons of society. Continuing arrests make it look like this thing runs a lot deeper than even the normally hysterical British press are making out.
Does any of this necessarily meet in some cohesive intentional meta-narrative for this film? Not really. Are these two points a way of joining this film to what is going on in the world? Certainly.
Important Disclaimer: In no way, shape or form am I suggesting that David Icke is right about what he claims in the above video, or that the makers of Prisoners coded any of that into the film intentionally. I couldn’t possibly know what is going on behind closed doors around the world and I don’t presume to. However, it’s an intriguing crossing of narratives, from bleak adult drama to fringe theory.
And that’s the movie you didn’t see.
