Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
The inside story of the search for an abducted teenager, as told by her and her family
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
In 2002, the 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was taken in the middle of the night from her family home in Utah's Salt Lake City. She was missing for nine months and, during the long police search for the teen, suspicion fell on her family with detectives theorising - according to dad Ed - that Elizabeth may have been kidnapped for blackmailing purposes because of his homosexuality. Ed wasn't openly gay at the time but would come out to his family years later, divorcing his wife Lois in 2019.
Elizabeth was eventually found, after having endured a horrific ordeal at the hands of Brian David Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee. She tells her story here with depth and perspective, along with reflections from dad Ed and other members of the family.
This certainly isn't the first time she had done that, but Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart does a neat job of packaging the whole story into one documentary, and uses 'never-before-seen material' to flesh it out, too. Modern true-crime documentaries tend to focus on the impact on victims rather than sensationalising the acts of the perpetrators and, in line with that, the film does a good job of demonstrating the emotional toll of the abduction on both Smart and her family. And of showing that there is a happy life to be lived after such an ordeal. (91 minutes)
