Movies Like Prisoners

Frequently asked about Prisoners

Common questions people search for, with answers written by us at MoviesPack.

• Who actually kidnapped Anna Dover and Joy Birch?▾

  Holly Jones (Melissa Leo) and her husband Bob Jones (David Dastmalchian) abducted the girls and hid them in the basement of their home. Holly was the true mastermind — she and her husband had lost their son to cancer years earlier and became convinced that the best way to wage war against God was to turn innocent parents into monsters by abducting their children. Bob had died by the time of the film's events, and Holly carried on the abductions alone, keeping victims sedated in a pit under the yard.

• Why did Holly Jones kidnap children and what was her ideology?▾

  Holly and her husband adopted a nihilistic, anti-religious worldview after the death of their son. They believed that abducting children and watching their parents descend into rage, violence, and moral compromise was a form of spiritual warfare — turning people into 'demons' as a way of attacking God. This is why Holly deliberately targets religious families like the Dovers, viewing their faith as the thing worth destroying. The maze symbol found throughout the film represents the labyrinthine suffering Holly intended to inflict.

• What is the significance of the maze symbol that appears repeatedly in the film?▾

  The maze symbol, which appears on a pendant worn by Alex Jones and on a notebook belonging to Bob Jones, is the cult symbol Holly and her husband used to represent their twisted ideology of trapping victims in suffering — a maze with no exit. Alex wore the pendant because he had been one of Holly's earlier abduction victims himself, kept long enough to be psychologically damaged before being released or 'adopted.' Detective Loki notices the maze tattoo on the knuckle of a suspect early in the investigation, tying multiple threads of the case together.

• What happens to Keller Dover at the end, and does he escape the pit?▾

  In the film's final minutes, Detective Loki discovers Anna alive in the pit in Holly's yard while Keller is trapped in the same pit after Holly shot him and pushed him in. As Loki prepares to drive Anna to the hospital, he hears a faint whistle — Keller blowing the emergency whistle Anna had given him — coming from beneath the ground. The film ends on this ambiguous note: Loki hears the whistle, implying he will eventually return and rescue Keller, but the movie cuts to black without confirming his survival, leaving his fate deliberately open.

• Was Alex Jones actually involved in the kidnappings, and why couldn't he just tell the truth?▾

  Alex Jones (Paul Dano) was not a perpetrator — he was himself a victim of Holly's earlier abductions, taken as a child and kept long enough to suffer severe developmental and psychological damage. His limited cognitive function is a direct result of the trauma Holly inflicted on him. He could not clearly communicate what he knew about the girls because his mental capacity had been permanently impaired; his cryptic utterance to Keller ('They only cried when I left them') was a fragmented memory from witnessing the girls, not a confession of guilt.