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.
Review of The Abandoned
