The Abandoned

source: The Abandoned

Despite the negative reviews, this film is an Eytan Rockaway masterpiece and you should read the horrornews net review which is glowing and thorough. I found the movie original, superbly well acted and nerve wracking throughout. Superficially you might think the movie predictable formulaic. Persist and you will be rewarded. You probably can guess the ending, you might even guess some of the plot, but that's true for a lot of movies, especially if you have read the book !! There's always room for a great re-telling of a story and this is a great re-hash of some familiar horror themes. I was riveted from start to finish. You're never quite sure if what you are seeing is real or imagined, whether some or all of the protagonists share the same experience, who's good and who's bad. The tension never eases, real edge of your seat stuff. Don't miss it!!

This murky little horror film involves a woman who may or may not be going out of her mind who gets a job as a security guard at a run down old apartment complex which has been long since abandoned. Her only company on the job is a fellow guard, cynical and disabled. The woman becomes convinced that a sinister presence lurks within the confines of the building and takes it upon herself to investigate... As you'd guess from the premise, CONFINED is very much par for the course for this type of film-making. It feels a lot like GRAVE ENCOUNTERS and the like, albeit without the 'found footage' hook and shooting more traditionally instead. There's a lot of stuff with CCTV footage, which is quite neat, but more often than not the film descends into the usual wandering around in dimly lit corridor type scenarios. The film lacks decent cast members; those present are okay, but hardly electrifying. Jason Patric (THE LOST BOYS) looks so unrecognisable that it took me half the film to realise who I was watching. And despite repeated efforts on the part of the director, CONFINED doesn't manage to be scary for a moment.

Another film which had a decent concept but was once more let down badly by the execution. OK, so she gets herself a job as Security for an abandoned Luxury Tower Block and strange things begin to happen, fair enough. Why though must these films always have people act like complete morons?? Checking the buildings Blueprints she notices that room 411 doesn't have an active camera and states this amazing fact to her colleague who then informs her that that area was not completed and therefore didn't have a camera...Now, first day of the job would any normal person then continue questioning and then insisting that "someone" go check it out?? No, of course not, you'd pay attention to the guy who's worked there for a number of years and has the experience and know-how of the building, wouldn't you!! This is only one of the horrible horror cliché's within this attempt. She also becomes obsessed with gaining entry to the 'room' to such an extent she breaks in...She allows an old homeless guy access to the building to shelter from the storm outside... Now i realise that these instances were actually plot related but this is my point. The plot, the film, the alleged cliché of a 'twist' at the end were all poor, the film was poor. Her acting was passable at times though for some reason they constantly had her 'act' shocked or surprised by continually slapping her hand over her mouth and even at times forehead in some vain attempt to emphasise just how shocked/surprised/or worried she was. The whole thing was obvious from the word go, obvious 'jump scares', obvious overly dramatic score which at times went way over board, obvious occurrences...etc...etc. They tried desperately to create an air of malice and tension with use of lighting and angles and of course mixing in the CCTV footage but i'm afraid none of it worked. It had certain moments, brief though they were that were passable but overall this was just a horrible film rather than a horror film.

As a huge fan of horror movies I was eager to find a mind blowing storyline that will point to my intelligence and not only to my basic instinct to be afraid of ghosts and demons. The abandoned definitely gave me that and more. The well written story will get you every time with a different (almost invisible) twist, the brilliant director did an amazing job by making me believe every word and every scene. Jason Patric was amazing as usual, one of his best works. "The Abandoned" pushed all the right bottoms, I highly recommend this for all the horror/thriller movies fans out there Can't wait to see what Eytan Rockaway is planning for us next..

"The Abandoned" has a young troubled woman (Louisa Krause) working as a night patrol at a massive abandoned luxury apartment building in New York City. Training her on the job is a cynical longtime employee (Jason Patric), but what should be fresh on-the-job jitters becomes a living nightmare when she discovers something sinister lurking in the building. Perhaps it's because I went into this film with relatively low expectations, but I found "The Abandoned" to really only be half-bad. Previous reviewers are astute in their observance of the film's atmosphere, which is laid on thick and is really the central reason that I stuck with the film from beginning to end. It's well-photographed and the sprawling Renaissance-meets-art deco interiors are profoundly creepy. The film is worth viewing for this reason alone, as it is truly engrossing on just a visual level. The script is where this film is truly weakest, although this mostly lay in the hodgepodge resolution, which is where the film really begins to come apart at the seams. It is not necessarily as cliché-ridden as many have seemed to paint it to be, though it is most definitely clichéd. At times the film reminded me of 2011's "The Innkeepers" due to the sparse cast and nightshift setting, though a far less subtle version; at other times, it seems inspired by 1999's "House on Haunted Hill" remake. Louisa Krause and Jason Patric have great chemistry on screen here, and play off of one another quite well. Both provide solid performances that are better than the material demands. Overall, "The Abandoned" is a middling supernatural horror film; it is far from revolutionary, and is at times frustrating in its employment of routine plot devices, but the synergy between Krause and Patric is great, and the film is at times legitimately creepy, even in its conventionality. On a visual and atmospheric level, it's fantastic, but, as I said, the script doesn't match up with the film's aesthetic strides. 5/10.

Some people can't be trusted to carry out the simplest of tasks. Julia is a single mother who has obviously had a troubled life, possibly due to substance abuse. Her mother is threatening to apply for full custody of her daughter, so this is the last chance saloon. She gets a well-paid job on the graveyard shift guarding a massive deserted palatial complex that has never been occupied owing to the slump. There is only her and the time-serving Cooper, who is confined to a wheelchair. All she has to do is watch screens all night, walk about every two hours, and don't let anybody in. What could be simpler? And of course, on her very first night she breaks every rule in the book, but if she didn't there would be no film, would there? Cooper is of the opinion she will last a week at most, par for the course due to a combination of the boredom and his sparkling wit. As it turns out, girlie guard does have a pill problem, but not the recreational kind; she "sees things" others can't see, and the good doktor has prescribed these to ensure she doesn't continue to see them. Cooper is not impressed with her explanation that the things she sees are indeed real, especially in this vast empty building in spite of its past; apparently part of it has not always been unoccupied. There is a massive twist in the end which is open to interpretation or misinterpretation, but this isn't a bad effort considering most of the film consists of people walking around in the dark.

I see that many people didn't like the movie as much as I did, so I feel compelled to write why I think it is awesome. First, the story is not a cliché and I find the script very cleverly written with a nice twist at the end, which I didn't expect. Second, the acting is great. Jason Patric is not at his finest, but he did his character OK. Louisa Krause, previously completely unknown to me, was amazing in her role. Her acting is believable and she is also smoking hot. The setting of the movie was great and the whole movie was a fun thrill ride, with some decent scares. If you expect a Hollywood blockbuster you might get disappointed, but if you are looking for a fine nighttime horror I highly recommend it.

I been on a movie set like this in which a director was able to get access to a place were he can film his entire movie all at once in a few days or weeks. Sometimes the problem with that is that they try to stretch out something that cannot be stretched. The first act is slow, and you can tell its slow because nothing happens that really drives the movie to go anywhere or get me interested at all (except for me thinking to myself "is that Jason Patrick?"). They could have used a better lead actress as well. As the movie progressed, it keep looking like it was going to be promising, but they kept holding on to moment in the film for far too ling and you loose interest. Overall this horror film was trying to be cleaver and imaginative, but mostly just lost me in boredom. Overall it was a good story that was just not implemented well enough.

From the moment this troubled woman (Julia Streak) arrives for the first night of her job, you know something is not right in the world of this film. Normal, everyday things like phone calls and the introduction of new co-workers have a feeling of oppression and menace. It doesn't hurt that this woman's partner at work is the sardonic and salacious Cooper played by the a very on his game Jason Patric. The cinematographer, Zach Galler actually seems to be using the darkness of the set to light the movie to magnificent ends. Coupled with the dark, foreboding style of production designer Akin McKenzie, and the sure handed direction of first-timer Eytan Rockaway, this movie kept me on the edge of my seat from the start to it's hair-raising finish. The Abandoned is hands down my favorite psychological thriller is some time and I give it my highest recommendation. 10/10