8 Movies to Die For: The Abandoned
Nov. 16th, 2007 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylCourtesy of Netflix, I watched the fourth installment of Horrorfest, The Abandoned. Before I get into that, can I just say (at the risk of gloating) that with all the lights shut off, and the TV on its "cinema" settings, oh baby -- THIS is how DVDs are meant to be watched. I'll never have one of them fancy shmancy basement home theaters, so this is the closest I can come. Of course, you all are welcome to hang out and watch some movies with me anytime.
But not even the Aquos can do much to maintain the proper mood in the face of Tery arriving home early, insisting I go about my business but turning on the kitchen light, sizzling some pork chops in a pan, clunking ice cubes into a glass, running the sink disposal, her cell phone going off (with her new Connecticut UCONN Huskies ringtone -- which, like most other college fight songs, is completely incompatible with atmospheric horror); however, I'm not holding the Sharp Corporation responsible for this shortcoming.
Between these very disruptive elements, I think I managed to piece together most of it: A quaint Russian family eats dinner in their quaint Russian farmhouse. I assume what they're saying isn't significant since we aren't given subtitles. Meanwhile a large truck is barrelling down the road, presumably towards them, a woman driving frantically and a pair of squalling babes beside her. The truck arrives at the farm and the farmer runs out to see what the commotion is, just in time to catch the now dead woman in his arms.
Present day. Marie, a tense, unhappy-looking woman, is traveling to Russia. She argues with her daughter briefly on the phone in the hotel room, then she's off to meet a notary about some property she inherited. Her mother, who was murdered soon after she was born, left her a farm and no one mentioned it to her until now, 41 years later. No one knows anything about her father. The whole exchange makes her impatient and more unhappy.
She treks out to the countryside and enlists the help of the gruff Anatoliy to drive her to her mother's farm. He says it's on an island accessible only by bridge, and you can tell by his demeanor that he thinks it's all a bad business. They drive and drive and drive, in quite a lengthy sequence that might have seemed more tedious if I wasn't trying to ignore Tery's clattering around instead of watching it. It's night by the time he comes to a stop seemingly in the middle of the woods, but he assures her the farm is just beyond a row of trees. He gets out to scout the way for her and naturally immediately disappears.
The truck dies and she gets spooked enough to go looking for him. She finds the house and explores it long and hard, again another potentially tiresome chain of events. Sure, it's a creepy, rundown old house that hasn't been lived in for 41 years, but I don't need to be shown every square inch of peeling plaster to get the idea. Then she runs into someone that looks an awful lot like her but for the blank, zombie-white eyes, pale dead skin and limp, wet hair.
She flees the house, almost drowns in the nearby lake, but is saved by a mysterious Russian stranger who claims to be her twin brother. He also came to learn about their mother. Despite maintaining a deep mistrust of him, she dozes off, sleeping the rest of the night and apparently most of the following day away, since the minute she wakes up he says, "We only have a few hours before nightfall. We have to hurry." Except "hurry" in Russian evidently means "continue our leisurely tour of the grounds," since rather than, I don't know, getting the hell away from the island that's obviously haunted and holds no real answers to their parentage, they instead wander out to the barn and discover human bones as well as a twin set of doppelgangers, only his is covered in blood and missing large portions of its flesh. Shooting it results in a matching wound on himself -- curious.
They flee back to the house, where he falls through a hole in the floor. She tries everything she can think of to help him, i.e. calling his name weakly a few times, before leaving him for dead. She goes upstairs again for reasons unknown, where she sees the ghostly reenactment of a man pinning a woman to a bed and stabbing her (which is actually kind of a cool scene -- the ghosts are only visible when the thin rays of her flashlight pass over them).
Back downstairs to steal her brother's traveling pack (in another needlessly extended bit wherein she closely examines every single article inside the bag). She suddenly begins acting sensibly, i.e. finding a rowboat on the shore and making an attempt to leave the island. I say "attempt" because *gasp!* she gets to the mainland only to discover herself facing the old homestead again. But how can that be? Hasn't this device already been used in other movies? The drama of the moment seems to imply that it's a fresh idea.
She returns to the house, again unsurprisingly finding her brother sitting calmly at the table. He refuses to talk about what happened to him when he went through the floor, but he will say that he now has all the answers to their questions (conveniently). The house wants them back. They were meant to die 41 years ago, and at midnight everything will be restored to that point so they can have a second chance to fulfill their intended destiny. No, no explanation whatsoever given as to how he knows this all of a sudden.
They do the only logical thing: board themselves up inside the haunted house. Wait, what? What follows would have been a very cool scene of paint sticking itself back on the walls, broken crockery repairing itself and returning to shelves, furniture being replaced and shattered windows being restored, if it didn't go on....and on....and on....and on.... I've never seen so much padding in a movie in all my life. WE. GET. IT.
Then they're back in 1966, hearing their father stabbing their mother, following him out to the barn where he tries to kill them as babies. The mother saves them, shooting the father dead (those are his bones in the barn), but then things start to get weird. Marie goes back into the house, where she confronts their father ('s ghost?), who's looking on as a couple of boars are devouring her full-grown brother (explaining his eviscerated doppelganger). She escapes in the truck, but wakes up in the notary's office...who is actually her father, looking not a day over 41, which he tells us was his age back in 1966. She runs into herself entering the office, tries to stop herself unsuccessfully, and then is back in the house again. She escapes AGAIN in the truck, only to drive it onto the bridge which is out, into the lake where she drowns (explaining her waterlogged ghost).
See my review of Young Adam on my opinion of people who drown without so much as thrashing in the water uselessly first.
I suppose the ending has a kind of symmetry to it that I can appreciate if I overlook the bizarro time loop that preceded it. Again, as far as "too disturbing for general audiences," I really do fear I've become too jaded -- or perhaps it was all Tery's fault. 2.5 out of 5
But not even the Aquos can do much to maintain the proper mood in the face of Tery arriving home early, insisting I go about my business but turning on the kitchen light, sizzling some pork chops in a pan, clunking ice cubes into a glass, running the sink disposal, her cell phone going off (with her new Connecticut UCONN Huskies ringtone -- which, like most other college fight songs, is completely incompatible with atmospheric horror); however, I'm not holding the Sharp Corporation responsible for this shortcoming.
Between these very disruptive elements, I think I managed to piece together most of it: A quaint Russian family eats dinner in their quaint Russian farmhouse. I assume what they're saying isn't significant since we aren't given subtitles. Meanwhile a large truck is barrelling down the road, presumably towards them, a woman driving frantically and a pair of squalling babes beside her. The truck arrives at the farm and the farmer runs out to see what the commotion is, just in time to catch the now dead woman in his arms.
Present day. Marie, a tense, unhappy-looking woman, is traveling to Russia. She argues with her daughter briefly on the phone in the hotel room, then she's off to meet a notary about some property she inherited. Her mother, who was murdered soon after she was born, left her a farm and no one mentioned it to her until now, 41 years later. No one knows anything about her father. The whole exchange makes her impatient and more unhappy.
She treks out to the countryside and enlists the help of the gruff Anatoliy to drive her to her mother's farm. He says it's on an island accessible only by bridge, and you can tell by his demeanor that he thinks it's all a bad business. They drive and drive and drive, in quite a lengthy sequence that might have seemed more tedious if I wasn't trying to ignore Tery's clattering around instead of watching it. It's night by the time he comes to a stop seemingly in the middle of the woods, but he assures her the farm is just beyond a row of trees. He gets out to scout the way for her and naturally immediately disappears.
The truck dies and she gets spooked enough to go looking for him. She finds the house and explores it long and hard, again another potentially tiresome chain of events. Sure, it's a creepy, rundown old house that hasn't been lived in for 41 years, but I don't need to be shown every square inch of peeling plaster to get the idea. Then she runs into someone that looks an awful lot like her but for the blank, zombie-white eyes, pale dead skin and limp, wet hair.
She flees the house, almost drowns in the nearby lake, but is saved by a mysterious Russian stranger who claims to be her twin brother. He also came to learn about their mother. Despite maintaining a deep mistrust of him, she dozes off, sleeping the rest of the night and apparently most of the following day away, since the minute she wakes up he says, "We only have a few hours before nightfall. We have to hurry." Except "hurry" in Russian evidently means "continue our leisurely tour of the grounds," since rather than, I don't know, getting the hell away from the island that's obviously haunted and holds no real answers to their parentage, they instead wander out to the barn and discover human bones as well as a twin set of doppelgangers, only his is covered in blood and missing large portions of its flesh. Shooting it results in a matching wound on himself -- curious.
They flee back to the house, where he falls through a hole in the floor. She tries everything she can think of to help him, i.e. calling his name weakly a few times, before leaving him for dead. She goes upstairs again for reasons unknown, where she sees the ghostly reenactment of a man pinning a woman to a bed and stabbing her (which is actually kind of a cool scene -- the ghosts are only visible when the thin rays of her flashlight pass over them).
Back downstairs to steal her brother's traveling pack (in another needlessly extended bit wherein she closely examines every single article inside the bag). She suddenly begins acting sensibly, i.e. finding a rowboat on the shore and making an attempt to leave the island. I say "attempt" because *gasp!* she gets to the mainland only to discover herself facing the old homestead again. But how can that be? Hasn't this device already been used in other movies? The drama of the moment seems to imply that it's a fresh idea.
She returns to the house, again unsurprisingly finding her brother sitting calmly at the table. He refuses to talk about what happened to him when he went through the floor, but he will say that he now has all the answers to their questions (conveniently). The house wants them back. They were meant to die 41 years ago, and at midnight everything will be restored to that point so they can have a second chance to fulfill their intended destiny. No, no explanation whatsoever given as to how he knows this all of a sudden.
They do the only logical thing: board themselves up inside the haunted house. Wait, what? What follows would have been a very cool scene of paint sticking itself back on the walls, broken crockery repairing itself and returning to shelves, furniture being replaced and shattered windows being restored, if it didn't go on....and on....and on....and on.... I've never seen so much padding in a movie in all my life. WE. GET. IT.
Then they're back in 1966, hearing their father stabbing their mother, following him out to the barn where he tries to kill them as babies. The mother saves them, shooting the father dead (those are his bones in the barn), but then things start to get weird. Marie goes back into the house, where she confronts their father ('s ghost?), who's looking on as a couple of boars are devouring her full-grown brother (explaining his eviscerated doppelganger). She escapes in the truck, but wakes up in the notary's office...who is actually her father, looking not a day over 41, which he tells us was his age back in 1966. She runs into herself entering the office, tries to stop herself unsuccessfully, and then is back in the house again. She escapes AGAIN in the truck, only to drive it onto the bridge which is out, into the lake where she drowns (explaining her waterlogged ghost).
See my review of Young Adam on my opinion of people who drown without so much as thrashing in the water uselessly first.
I suppose the ending has a kind of symmetry to it that I can appreciate if I overlook the bizarro time loop that preceded it. Again, as far as "too disturbing for general audiences," I really do fear I've become too jaded -- or perhaps it was all Tery's fault. 2.5 out of 5
