Sometimes, humanity makes it hard to have the faith in it that God has for us. There are so many things we do, collectively and as individuals, that would seem to make us unworthy of the blessings He gives us daily. The Church, relying on Scripture and Tradition, teaches that we have nothing without God. And yet we continue to reach for things that render the Almighty’s gifts practically worthless in our eyes. If you ever want to see a movie that confirms some of the worst of what I am talking about, watch Take Me (2017). That statement is a little misleading. The main character, Ray Moody (Pat Healy), is not a bad guy. It is the people who hire him who may lead you to question whether there is any goodness in mankind. As a Catholic, I am here to tell you that there is, but you will have to read this review for the rest.

The rest, for Ray, involves an unusual business proposition in Take Me: for a fee, he kidnaps people who have arranged in advance to be abducted. His company, Kidnap Solutions, promises a frightening but controlled experience that can help clients break destructive habits or simply indulge their desire for adventure. Unfortunately, convincing a bank to finance this enterprise proves difficult. A loan officer is understandably skeptical when Ray explains his services, leaving him desperate for money and dependent on his family’s goodwill. He turns to his brother-in-law, Tom (Mark Kelly), for a loan, although his sister Natalie (Alycia Delmore) has little patience for his unconventional career. Ray’s methods are demonstrated when he abducts Stuart (Jim O’Heir), a man hoping to overcome his compulsive eating. During an eight-hour session, Ray confronts Stuart about his diet and forces him to eat a dozen hamburgers. By the end, the exhausted client thanks him, convinced that the experience has ruined his appetite for his favorite food. Ray’s financial prospects improve when a woman named Anna St. Blair (Taylor Schilling) calls with a more lucrative request. She wants to disappear for an entire weekend and offers him $5,000, but she also insists that he physically strike her during the ordeal. Uncomfortable with the violence she desires, Ray initially declines before reconsidering the badly needed payday. He begins following Anna to learn her routine, only to receive a message warning him that his surveillance is too obvious. When the appointed time arrives, he stages a carjacking and takes her to the house he uses for his kidnapping scenarios. Determined to maintain the illusion, Ray refuses to break character and interrogates Anna about supposedly confidential files belonging to an invented client. Anna initially appears terrified but soon begins ridiculing her captor, questioning his story and taunting him for being unwilling to hit her. Ray eventually does strike her, though the encounter leaves him increasingly unsure who is controlling the experience. He briefly leaves to repay Tom, but Natalie discovers the money and confronts him about using their parents’ house for his business. Her intrusion complicates matters further, and Ray soon hears a news report that police are investigating Anna’s disappearance. Suddenly, the kidnapping appears far less fictitious than he believed. When he tries to speak with Anna outside their assigned roles, she attacks him with a makeshift weapon, stabbing him in the back. Police officers arrive at the house, forcing Ray to conceal Anna in the basement while he attempts to answer their questions without attracting suspicion. Once the officers depart, he treats his injury and confronts his increasingly hostile client. Anna insists that she never hired him and knows nothing about Kidnap Solutions. Ray produces the electronic agreement she signed and plays the telephone message she left him, but she dismisses both as fabricated evidence. Horrified by the possibility that he has genuinely abducted an innocent woman, Ray agrees to release her. He changes his mind when he realizes that her account could send him to prison and implicate Natalie, who knows about the house. Desperate to prevent Anna from leaving before they devise a mutually acceptable explanation, he swallows her car keys. Anna responds by shooting him repeatedly with a pellet gun. As Ray struggles to bring the keys back up, she slips and knocks herself unconscious. When she awakens, Ray is driving her car, hoping to resolve the situation somewhere more secluded. She punches him, and he puts her in the trunk for the remainder of the journey to a remote vacation house. There, the two finally discuss their personal histories. Both have been divorced, and Ray explains that his former wife helped establish Kidnap Solutions before accusing him of criminal behavior. Anna offers not to report him but presses him about the accusations and suggests that he enjoys dominating and hurting people. Ray loses control and chokes her, apparently confirming her suspicions. She strikes him with a fireplace poker, rendering him unconscious, and takes possession of a rifle belonging to Tom. The balance of power reverses completely as Anna forces Ray into the trunk of her car and drives him back toward the city. Upon arriving, however, she cheerfully thanks him for the extraordinary experience and even offers to invest in his business. Ray realizes that Anna arranged the entire ordeal and deliberately convinced him that he had committed a real kidnapping, turning his own service against him. Stunned and emotionally exhausted, he can barely respond before making his way home. Along the way, he spots Stuart eating at a restaurant. Ray begins to cry, but when he notices that his former client is eating a salad rather than a hamburger, he breaks into laughter.

This final moment in Take Me shows that at least one of Ray’s bizarre attempts to help another person appears to have worked. I bring that up because one of the first statements Ray makes while talking to the banker is that his business is based on helping people. He goes on to suggest that doing so is the cornerstone of any worthwhile endeavor. This is an interesting statement from a Catholic point of view, not least because of the nature of his work. The Church certainly recognizes the dignity of honest labor and the obligation to serve our neighbors. Yet a good intention does not automatically make every means of achieving it morally acceptable. Not every enterprise can be called honest simply because its owner believes he is doing some good. With it being the Halloween season, I sometimes wonder about the wisdom of certain attractions that become popular at this time of year, particularly so-called haunted houses. The Church warns us against occult practices, although that is not the same as condemning every fictional ghost or harmless Halloween amusement. This is not meant to be a Catholic diatribe against Halloween. There is nothing inherently wrong with some lighthearted spookiness. There is, however, a line between enjoying a fictional scare and taking pleasure in cruelty or treating evil as something admirable. Silly ghosts and cartoonish vampires are one thing; glorifying monstrous behavior is quite another. This might sound off topic, considering that the film is about a man who simulates kidnappings, but some extreme haunted attractions likewise sell experiences that bring people uncomfortably close to the terror and humiliation of actual violence. Even when someone agrees to participate, consent alone does not settle every moral question. The distinction worth making in Ray’s case is that he initially resists Anna’s demand for physical violence. He genuinely wants to help his clients, however misguided his methods may be, while Anna seems determined to push the experience into something much darker. Nevertheless, Ray himself eventually crosses moral boundaries when fear and desperation overcome his better judgment. His intentions cannot excuse those choices. I would pray that he finds another way to put his desire to help people into practice, one that respects their dignity without making fear, coercion, or suffering the product being sold.

I know the final moment of Take Me suggests that Ray genuinely believes he is helping people. While it is notable that he wants to do good, I would recommend that he find another way to be of assistance. You do not need to watch this movie to recognize the truth of that advice.