The Abandoned

The feature-length debut of noted horror filmmaker Nacho Cerdá, The Abandoned is an admittedly stylish piece of work that’s ultimately undone by an overly deliberate pace and increasingly confusing screenplay. Anastasia Hille stars as Marie, a Russian woman who embarks on a journey to the desolate countryside in an effort to unmask the true identity of her birth parents (things, of course, go horribly wrong). While there’s certainly no denying the effectiveness of Cerdá’s directorial choices, with the creepy, atmospheric vibe one of The Abandoned‘s few positive attributes, the emphasis of style over substance becomes more and more problematic as the movie progresses. Cerdá expects the viewer to care about Marie’s plight but fails to offer up a single reason to do so; there’s consequently virtually nothing propelling the film forward, particularly in the film’s first half (which seems to consist entirely of long sequences in which Marie wanders the darkness armed only with a flashlight). The confounding third act certainly doesn’t help matters, as Cerdá, along with co-screenwriters Karim Hussain and Richard Stanley, deftly transforms what should have been a straight-forward ghost story into a seriously baffling ordeal.

*1/2 out of ****