Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 35% of 94 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Kidnap strays into poorly scripted exploitation too often to take advantage of its pulpy premise – or the still-impressive talents of its committed star." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 44 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 74% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 53% saying they would definitely recommend it.
Glenn Kenny, writing for RogerEbert.com, gave the feature half a star out of four, called it "garbage", and gave negative remarks to the screenplay, overall plot, and the main character's tendency to talk to herself throughout the entire film. David Ehrlich from IndieWire gave it a "D−" along with a similar response where he also criticized the directing, writing that Prieto "never demonstrates the interest to allow his heroine to take things into her own hands, but the movie does gain momentum as it chugs along."
Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave Kidnap two stars out of five, and said that the film did not do everything possible to take advantage of its "own monstrously exploitative premise" and instead focused on making it realistic. The Chicago Sun-Times' Richard Roeper also gave the same rating and criticized the runtime, screenplay, characters, cinematography, and repetitive closeups, while also giving praise to Halle Berry's performance. From Time Out, Michael Gingold gave a three stars out of five mixed review, where he said the film was "more absurd than Taken". In his three stars out of four review, Rex Reed from The New York Observer found the feature to be "another entry in the overcrowded, snatched-in-broad-daylight genre of abducted-children thrillers", but said that it had "no shortage of thrills".
Alonso Duralde from TheWrap summarized the entire film and Berry's performance by saying that it is a "cheesy little thriller, an unapologetic B-movie and a clear attempt by Oscar-winner Halle Berry at having a Taken of her very own." From The New York Times, Teo Bugbee gave Kidnap a positive review, writing that it "doesn't waste time trying to build an arc to Karla's desperation" and found that Berry "approaches the task of playing this unhinged mother on the run with sincerity [...] her adrenaline kicks in the moment she sees Frankie being shoved into the back seat of an unfamiliar Mustang, and it doesn't dip until the credits roll."
