iHostage Review: Dull, Boring and Unimaginative

Following the 2022 hostage crisis at Amsterdam’s Apple Store, the film follows a man stuck inside an Apple Store after a gunman takes the building hostage. Scared and desperate to get out alive, Ilian and his fellow hostages decide to do whatever it takes to end the crisis.

The film has a runtime of 100 minutes.

iHostage Review

Netflix’s thriller film iHostage is a recreation of a horrifying 2020 incident involving a man holding a Dutch tourist hostage in an Apple store. The film gets most of its facts right and recreates the scene like we are seeing it unfold in real time. Unfortunately, it isn’t truly able to capture the horror and the anticipation of being stuck in a situation like this.

Soufiane Moussouli starts off the film with a sudden shock as our protagonist goes in to buy AirPods and gets a gun to his head within 5 minutes. However, following that interaction, we get minute after minute of him looking blankly outside with a confused Ilian under his arm. It doesn’t make you feel scared, and, in fact, he seems forgettable after a while because nothing really happens. He almost feels harmless at times and extremely bored at others.

There are several characters in the film that we jump between, and none are even mildly interesting, including Ilian. In spite of getting all the facts right, there’s hardly any tension because you don’t care about any of these people. There’s hardly any backstory, and the creators never try to tell us who any of these people are. There’s only some stale fear and petty disagreements that get on your nerves. After 30 minutes, I started to count the time to the end because it started to get really boring.

There’s hardly any tension, and thus the film doesn’t create any impact apart from being a film on hostage negotiations. There are some moments, especially as the police try to get some of the hostages out, that the film picks up. But apart from that, it never really picks up, and anything that happens clearly feels like a way to create a conflict instead of an actual problem that these trapped people have to overcome. The last scene of the hostage situation is the most thrilling, however, and will give you the sort of tension that you might have missed for the rest of the film.

I liked everyone’s performances, although there’s not a lot happening at any point to make you sit up and take notice. It’s almost a badly done drama with some thrills peppered in, and there’s not enough for any of these well-known actors to show their mettle at any point. I think the biggest issue is that Ammar is an extremely annoying antagonist with little to nothing to offer. He’s neither scary, nor is he intimidating and sometimes screams to make us take notice of him. It takes away any fear that you might feel for the hostages and makes you not take the story seriously. The only fun part here is Marcel Hensema screaming at an influencer, which is both relatable and on-point. Alas the character hardly has anything else to do here.

Final Thoughts

Despite being a thriller, iHostage conveys none of the thrilling anticipation that a story like this should make us feel. There are some moments that will leave you on edge, but it mostly has nothing to say other than conveying the facts correctly. It’s dull, boring and unimaginative and leaves a lot to be desired.

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