Creatures of Necessity

AWARD THIS 2023 NOMINEE! You’ve been kidnapped, tied to a chair, and held for ransom. What would you do? Sit there and wait or do you assess the situation and plan your escape? Of course, escape is the answer in director Christian Kazadi and writer Njedeh Anthony’s thriller, Creatures of Necessity.

Creatures of Necessity opens thirteen days after the kidnapping of fallen actor Isabella Costini (Mindy Gilkerson). Drugged at a party, Isabella finds herself tied to a chair with three “parasites” (as she calls them) arguing amongst themselves over their next move. Her kidnappers, code-named Platinum (Dane Oliver), Diamond (Andrew John Morrison), and Nitro (Isaiah Locust), are in a panic because the job was only supposed to last four days, and they’d be paid $1 million once it’s done.

“…[Isabella is] looking for a way not just to escape but to exact revenge.”

The extra time has been both a blessing and curse for Isabella as she has been able to detox from her current drug addictions. The curse is that it involved a lot of vomiting. Being the actress that she is, Isabella continues the appearance of a drug addict, but by breaking the fourth wall, we learn she is completely sober within her senses and lays out her plan for our benefit. Isabella takes a divide-and-conquer approach. With Platinum, she takes advantage of the fact that he’s a barista by day and a playwright by night. She leads him to believe that she can help get his script off the ground, quickly seducing him. Nitro is in a tenuous emotional state. He’s recently divorced after his wife’s infidelity and even more rattled after Isabella may or may not have dropped the N-word.

Diamond is the harder nut to crack. He’s the only one who has a cool head, and he appears to be the one in charge. Though Isabella’s plan to play her abductors against one another appears to be working, a mysterious figure arrives in The Prince (Johnjay Fitih). He is ready to shake everything up as he represents the mastermind behind the entire kidnapping.