The Abandoned (2006)
Marie, a film producer, returns to her native Russia to find her birth parents. She quickly learns they are dead, and she has inherited their long-empty farmhouse. At the farm, she meets Nicolai, who claims to be her twin brother. Events take a terrifying turn when the two spot a pair of ghastly doppelgangers and the house itself seems to propel them toward a fate they should have met 40 years earlier.
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People are voting emotionally.
Just so...so bad
I gave it a 7.5 out of 10
One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.
Or, perhaps another title for this could have been 'The Perils of Marie Jones'. Anastasia Hille plays Jones, who inherits the haunted-est haunted house you ever saw. Director and co-writer Nacho Cerda is as persuasive as he can be in convincing us as to the sinister aspects of this house, which has a kind of sentience. And through its dusty, slimy corridors and broken windows and floorboards Marie travels, occasionally coming across blank-eyed wraiths.I can only think of 2014 film 'Across the River' that creates and spins such a deliciously sinister web of shabby, grotesque dilapidation - a study of decay. Here, the story-line is secondary to mood, with vague suppositions from Marie's twin Nicolai (Karel Roden) about the building recreating doppelgangers to recreate scenes of murder the house has previously borne witness to. This is suggested in the film's opening scene involving two abandoned babies found by a Russian peasant family.Perhaps it is best not to think too much about any structured storyline, but sit back and drink in the atmosphere, the sparse landscape, the vast open spaces drenched in moistened fog, the cadaverous spectres, the possessive nature of the building ... and other such delights. There is a very satisfying moment towards the end in which a seemingly irrelevant collision brings things full circle.Welcome to the family.
I liked the story, the acting, the soundtrack (which is also very dark and mysterious, and it is great providing suspense to the film), but what I appreciated the most was the production, the dark ambiences, the surrealism, which turns this movie into one very obscure, weird n creepy flick. Another good thing was the house; it was very scary. I like how it was sort of alive, and in control. It's a very dark movie with shady and mysterious ambiences. The cinematography is excellent with a fantastic camera work (great camera shots and plans) and surreal imagery. The settings are also great, especially those beautiful landscapes. The plot is complex and non-linear, because it seems it goes in a kind of a looping form Nacho Cerda manages to make an isolated farmhouse and forest incredibly creepy.The film is definitely one of the best technically executed horror films that I have seen in a long time with top notch sound design. Some of the locations were really isolated n beautiful.
This is what a decent haunted house movie should be like. That right sense of mystery and horror and of light and dark. The plot that drags in the viewer and doesn't offend you with unsightly images. A woman flees her murderous husband to save her children but dies herself. Her daughter grows up then goes in search of her ancestral home and ends up at the scene her story began but discovers her brother and ghosts; unfortunately, that's not where the story ends. Where the story loses me is in its time warp sub-plot where the siblings discover the house restoring itself as well as the ghosts of their future counterparts. They end up back in time and trapped reliving the events of their childhood, and when the woman tries to escape, she just ends up back to the house. It's scary, atmospheric and suspenseful, but it also becomes tedious, confusing and unbelievable at time. It is not just a simple haunted house movie and that's the shame, but still, it is worth watching if you don't mind a lack of logic in your story-telling.
movie starts out OK. the scene is set well, the acting is good and its all very spooky. what the film lacks is any sort of sense of progression. in fact, as the movie went on it reminded me a lot of 'lost' the TV series where there were some great outlandish ideas that were very cool and you kept watching because you were interested in how they would be resolved. they are not. the films plot seems to be just a skeleton to hold all these ideas together. there's no payoff for watching and the more you watch the more sick you feel because it has that ' I'm gonna throw up' feel to it. credit for the great setup and the initial scares but can't recommend it too strongly.