The Abandoned

source: The Abandoned

Moviecut—The Abandoned

Going back to the place of your birth is never easy and why would Marie (Anastasia Hille) go back? Well, who wouldn't go back to get the land and house that you were born in. It's not easy to see why, but the scary turn of events that happened after that, make for a horror movie. This movie proves to be a stunning success because of many factors, one of which is a remote location, Russia. Another would be the fact that this movie can actually happen in real life. The third, is that is tries to deal with time and an never ending cycle of terror that puts Marie (Anastasia Hille) into a returning course of horror. Remote Locations always make for good horror movies. why? well, because there is nothing out they're to save you from the insanity and confusion of your mind. Out there everyone and anything can play with your senses. This movie does that very well. As she goes on her course to get what is hers she finds herself in a god awful situation. Out there anything can happen and does. i know some of us have heard this tale. Going back to grandmothers house, only to hear something move around. Hear a crack or a voice but there is nothing there. what could it be? This movie, puts it right there for you, BAM. plenty of those horror moments that make you jump. Marie (Anastasia Hille) can only go on instinct and reaction as she tries to keep herself afloat from the terror that is running wild in the house.

This DVD would have been more enjoyable to me with a less abrasive lead character. "Marie Jones," played by Anatasia Hille, was an utterly unlikeable profane, hard-looking 40-ish scumbag....and we're supposed to root for her? I can see why this actress is unknown. Karel Roden, playing her brother "Nicolai" was good guy. He had a nice temperament, never uttered bad word, saved his sister's life when she first arrives at this haunted house in the middle of the Russian woods, and never got thanks from the foul-mouthed woman. Had the main character, "Marie," been a decent person, I would have cared more and subsequently the horror would have meant more. I'm old school, so hearing a "lady" using the f-word as casual as can be, along with an assortment of profanities almost every sentence, is not appealing. Sorry. After an hour of this constantly-frowning nasty woman, I could care less what happened to her. That's the problem with having lead characters who are unlikable. Perhaps the best aspect of the movie is the surround sound. It's excellent, with good use from the rear speakers, and that adds to the suspense. The visuals are pretty decent, too. It's nicely filmed. Those are far better than the story. That story revolves around the two people here becoming doppelgangers. According to the dictionary, a "doppelganger" is "a ghostly counterpart of a living person." What these two people see are themselves as dead people. It's kind of weird and like most horror movies, nothing to take seriously......just a lot of occult nonsense. We're just along for a scary and entertaining couple of hours. This film just didn't provide all of the above as well as it could have. I'm not surprised to hear this "horrorfest" movie was a direct-to-video DVD. That about says it all.

I don't scare easily but this one gave me goosebumps on several occasions. The scene where the two leads first confront their doppelgangers in the barn is one of the most frightening scenes I have seen. Nacho Cerda really knows how to build the suspense and he does a terrific job combining the music and sound effects. The story might not be the most original (it owes a small debt to both Mariano Baino's DARK WATERS and Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND plus, to a lesser extent, CARNIVAL OF SOULS) but the execution is near perfect. Also, it is nice to see a film that doesn't feature pretty teens as the leads. Anastasia Hille and Karel Roden are quite good. I've been waiting for Cerda to make a full length film for over 10 years and it has definitely been worth the wait.

A different look at horror. The styling differences between American and Russian films is interesting. However from my American perspective this movie just wasn't that good. The protagonist, Marie played by Anastasia Hille wasn't a pleasant character and I had a hard time identifying with her. She was disagreeable most of the time and confused for much of what little time was left. Also too much time was spent in bringing her to the main location of the film. Then a long time passed before any real suspense built up. Once that happened it seemed volume was used as the main effect which was more annoying than anything else. The concept was more original than most Direct-to-video movies and they didn't use sex to make up for a thin plot. All in all I'd recommend it for renting, but not for theater goers.

Unless you are petrified of Russian people or boars, this movie is a snorefest. Actually, I fell asleep about 40 minutes in & had to fight the urge to just leave the theater. I wish I had. A waste of a perfectly lovely Saturday evening. Even "Silent Hill" was scarier. Heck, even "Pan's Labyrinth" was scarier. I'm still unclear on what was supposed to be scary in this flick. To begin with, I'm very leery of movies that use "pidgin Russian" like this one did in the opening credits. It's embarrassing to me since I brought a group of my Russian friends & we all cringed. Oh my god. Hmm. Well, luckily for me (& probably you, too) this movie has already escaped my brain & I just stepped out of it an hour ago. So I have no specifics, just murky visuals that go nowhere & some languishing-now-dead hope that anything would happen. Perhaps I saw a completely mutilated version of this film because I can't believe it got such great reviews here (which is why I saw it) & ended up being so completely devoid of not only Horror or Suspense but Overall Entertainment Value as well. I give it a 2 because, yes, I fell asleep & wanted to leave after 40 minutes but I woke up & didn't leave.

In 1966, somewhere in Russia, a wounded woman drives a truck to an isolated farm with two babies. Forty years later, the film producer Marie Jones (Anastasia Hille) leaves her daughter in California and travels back to her home land in the wilderness of Russia. Marie is one of the children and had received a phone call from the notary public Andrei Misharin (Valentin Ganev) that had told her where the farm of her family is. Marie arrives in the abandoned house and meets the stranger Nicolai (Karel Roden) that tells her that he had also received a call from Misharin and he is her twin brother. Weird things happen in the house and Marie and Nicolai are haunted by eerie ghosts of themselves. Further, they find that they are trapped in the house and can not leave the place. "The Abandoned" is a frightening and creepy film of ghosts, with a nightmarish atmosphere but a dull story. The unknown Anastasia Hille has great performance and the cinematography is very dark; but the story is very confused and predictable. Cristopher Smith used in "Triangle" (2009) a similar idea of people trapped in a location that can never leave the cycle. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Abandonados" ("Abandoned") Note: On 04 January 2021. I saw this film again.

This is one of those puzzling parallel universes past/future movies that leaves you guessing who's who and what's what. It has some good things going for it: it's not filmed in LA but in Bulgaria (the story takes place in Russia) and Spain, it doesn't feauture skinny teenage models, it's somewhat thoughtful, it starts with some great shots of the sky and of fields. But with these kinds of movies, either the setup of the puzzle works but the resolution at the end fails, or the setup stinks and the resolution works. This movie falls into the latter. There's endless running around dark rooms and halls with flashlights and it's not clear when or why, there's countless instances of driving around in an old truck only to end up at the same place, and all of this is taking place without much story telling to give us reason to care. I fell asleep several times while all this was going on, it just seemed pointless. Near the end of the movie, things get interesting because one hopes that there's some type of resolution or explanation as to what on earth is going on. Some gore and very nice nudity is introduced as if the filmmakers finally remembered that they were doing a horror film. But in the end they fail to make sense of it all, which frankly is all too common in movies, where story-telling is sacrificed for the sake of sounds and visuals and the last 10 minutes they want to cram all the reasons for the existence of the movie. One can't care for any of the characters, and there are only 2 of them. One annoying American woman and a Russian guy who's accent is too heavy to understand what he's talking about. Even though it's a foreign movie the sound editing is done the American way for American ADD audiences: excedingly, annoyingly loud. Even though the ending doesn't succeed entirely it brought some live into an otherwise boring movie, it somehow it opened some possibilities that are interesting. Maybe that was the plan all along: to bore the audience during 9/10 of the movie while the puzzle is setup and then give you something to think about in the end so you'll end up liking the movie. Sorry, but there's just too much not to like about it.

Director Nacho Cerda creates an intriguing, interesting story, tracing the roots of an americanized Russian woman. This film follows her back to Russia, initially having given up her quest to find her parents, now more than ever she wants to go and find her past and reveal the mystery of who her parents were. However she meets strange people on the way and is being told many different stories about who she is and where she comes from. This film worked for me for a number of reasons: it is story driven as well as effects driven, it has solid acting, great location shots, and a strangely, highly flawed script that does create interest. The last half of the film begins to bog down under the weight of some of the repetitiveness, but never to the point of overtaking the film and its atmosphere. And atmosphere is one thing this film has plenty of. I especially liked the way the character of Marie was treated. She is a flawed woman with an interesting past that the film delves into in several different ways. These scenes are effectively done and help make Marie all the more real. The acting is great. Sure, some of the script is hokey hooey and will not make terribly much sense - I'm still not sure what happened in the end, but the film works nonetheless for the aforementioned reasons. I was pleasantly surprised despite some pre-conceived ideas going into the film.