‘Caught’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - Girls In Danger

Caught (or Atrapados in Spanish) might just be the best Harlan Coben adaptation on Netflix. Yet, it isn't very good or appealing. The issues it deals with are timely: The cost of doing half-baked journalism and the troubles of being a teenager. The latter was also scathingly and thrillingly discussed in Adolescence. Caught merely touches the issue from a safe distance. When a son tells his mother that all the students started bitching about a girl as soon as she left the party premises, you take his words as a generic statement. The son talks about the hypocrisy displayed by a certain group of people after someone's death, and Caught could have been a much better show if it had shown us this hypocrisy instead of dispensing a disposable comment. Caught is fascinating as long as you think about it. Like Adolescence, it highlights the gap between the children and their parents. One parent is shocked to learn that their daughter has a boyfriend. A workaholic mother constantly ignores or rejects her son's requests to have a conversation. This busy mommy is a journalist named Ema Garay (Soledad Villamil). When she accuses Leo (Alberto Ammann) of being a child predator, she puts the wheels of disaster into motion.

How exactly her decision affects others around her is revealed at the end. Most Harlan Coben adaptations like Shelter, Missing You, and Fool Me Once first gradually become dull and then fizzle out after throwing all their cards on the table. The final revelations don't do justice to the intriguing mystery initially set up to hook the viewers. Caught doesn't suffer from this problem. It does threaten to turn into a dull affair with all that talk about land ownership and whatnot, but then it pulls the rug out from under your feet satisfyingly enough. Like Missing You and Fool Me Once, Caught puts a female protagonist at the center. Ema is as strong-willed as Detective Kat Donovan. The women can be defined by labels like "tough," "professionally committed," and "driven." Yet, the shows flatten their strengths by reducing them to puppets. Ema's investigations aren't exactly brain-teasers. Characters often provide her with clues, mostly in the form of video recordings, which Ema carefully observes before proceeding to interrogate the person in the footage. Information is handed to her in a way that feels as if someone is giving one page at a time from the script to an actor. Caught is devoid of a suspenseful atmosphere. We might as well be listening to a dialogue rehearsal.

The performances exist within a narrow range. The actors vomit their lines with serious faces. Carmela Rivero, though, has to be an exception. She effectively conveys a teenager's shifting emotions. Her character can sometimes be a talented violinist and, sometimes, an adult entertainer. Sometimes naughty, sometimes innocent. Her Martina is confident in her skin and knows how to play with men. Caught, like many Harlan Coben adaptations, is mainly forgettable, but it contains one good scene that surprisingly rings true and also feels intense. It comes when Ema tells her husband's murderer to kill herself. The character had hit Ema's husband with her car while driving drunk. Now, she desperately apologizes to her. She even writes letters to ask for her forgiveness. If this scene sticks out here, that's because it's so good that it seems to have been lifted from somewhere else. Nothing in Caught will stick in your head for more than two or three days, and despite showing promise initially, the story eventually buries itself into a pit of clichés. Nevertheless, this scene between Ema and the husband killer will probably stay with you for a longer period.

Final Score- [4/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times