that she sees it as both realistic and happy. Release Chained had its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal on 5 August 2012. Anchor Bay Entertainment released it direct-to-video on DVD and Blu-ray in the US on 2 October 2012. Although there was money budgeted for a director's cut, they had to use it in other areas. Lynch still wants to do a director's cut eventually. The film was originally rated NC-17 by the MPAA for "some explicit violence". Lynch appealed the rating, but it was upheld. She later edited the film to achieve an R rating. Kevin Carney of Anchor Bay said that films with comparable violence were rated R for arbitrary reasons, and Lynch said that her films were targeted with NC-17 ratings for their authenticity and intensity, which, according to her, "rewards a casual attitude toward violence." Lynch later said that NC-17 had failed, as audiences still associated it with the old X rating. The NC-17 scene that was cut, which depicts a more graphic version of Mary's (Amy Matysio) death, is included as a special feature. Lynch stated that she would have preferred to release the film under its working title Rabbit, but the studio would not comply. Reception The film drew a polarized response from critics. Negatively comparing it to Jennifer Lynch's debut Boxing Helena in terms of misogyny, Dennis Harvey of Variety called it "a repugnant exercise in physical and psychological sadism" and "a redundant wallow in arted-up, torture-porn cruelty". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian and Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph both rated it one out of five, with Bradshaw calling it a "fantastically crass and fatuous serial-killer movie" and Robey calling it "a lurid disgrace". David Hughes of Empire rated it two out of five and described it as "plenty nasty but singularly lacking in clever new twists on a weary genre". Jamie S. Rich of DVD Talk rated it one and a half out of five, criticizing Vincent D'Onofrio's performance as "kind of comical" and the ending as "increasingly ridiculous", although he praised the sequence between Rabbit and Angie and Conor Leslie's performance. Conversely, Matt Glasby of Total Film rated it three out of five and called it a "tense serial killer thriller", with the ending being his only main point of contention. Rod Lott of the Oklahoma Gazette praised the first half of the film as "absorbing and