The Abandoned

Plot synopsis:
A Russian peasant family is sitting down to dinner when a run-down, overheating truck comes to a halt in the front yard. The Father opens the door to find a now dead woman, obviously murdered, and two crying infants in the seat next to her.40 years later. We meet Marie Jones who has been summoned back to Russia by a notary who claims to have found her long dead parents and the home they once owned. As she mounts the steps to his office, she runs into someone, but brushes it off.After meeting with the notary, who explains he found no other living heirs, she sets out to visit and claim her parent's home. She arrives at the house where her mother died and is "attacked" by a now very old mother who, in Russian, insists that she not go to the Kardinovsky Farm. They're interrupted by Anitoly, her guide, the only person willing to venture to the farm at night.The farm sits on the "island" a small parcel of land surrounded by the river and only accessible by a bridge. After hours of driving they cross the bridge and stop just a few yards from the house. Anitoly tells Marie to stay put while he makes sure there are no animals between them and the house.Marie waits, and then sees what appears to be Anitoly ahead of her, but when she leaves the truck, she finds herself alone. Within minutes the truck dies, leaving the forest quiet.With no one around, and no where else to go, she enters the old house armed only with a flashlight and begins to investigate. While exploring the ground floor she hears a bang and a child wailing from upstairs and rushes up as quickly as possible to see... nothing. She enters the nearest room, a nursery, and sees, out of the corner of her eye, a woman walking past the door.When she runs into the hallway she sees the same blonde woman turn into another room and she follows only to scream as she comes face to face with her doppleganger who appears to be very real and soaked to the bone. She runs out the door in time to see the truck (and presumably Anitoly) leave. In a panic she chases him and falls down a hill and into the river where, since she can't swim, she begins to drown.She wakes up in a much warmer and brighter lit room in the house. There is a man (Nikolai) rifling through her wallet. Marie smacks him across the face with a log, then flees the room.He chases her and explains that he is her brother and that he too was summoned by the notary. She is of course skeptical, as the notary had told her she had no brothers or sisters, but when he takes her upstairs and shows her their cribs she realizes he is telling the truth.She tells him what she saw and he explains, that seeing your double shows you the way in which you will die.Very quickly they meet Nikolai's doppleganger (a bloody, ravaged body) and they both realize they have to get out of the house and off the island. As they get ready to flee Nikolai falls through a hole in the floor and vanishes leaving Marie alone. She returns upstairs, determined to find anything to explain what is happening. Upstairs, in her parents room, she witnesses some of the events of the past as she watches her father stab her mother to death on their bed. Screaming, she turns to find her doppleganger behind her, yet again. This time it catches her in the babies' room and seems to suck out part of her life, leaving her gasping and disoriented. She flees the house.There is a boat on one side of the river, and she takes it to the other side, leaving the island, and her doppleganger (watching from the shore), behind her. Unfortunately, it's too late, and as she runs through the forest, she finds herself before the house again.This time when she enters, she finds the dining room is suddenly... clean and neat, as it must have been decades before. At the table, looking morosely at a birthday cake, is an injured Nikolai. He didn't die, but merely fell into the basement through the floor. He explains to Marie that he's figured out what is going on: they were never meant to have left the house in the first place. They were supposed to have died with their mother all those years ago and now, on the eve of their birthday, the house has called them back to fulfill their destinies at midnight.When the clock strikes midnight, the entire house returns to the state it was in 1966, and they hear their father enter the house. Marie tries to intercept, hoping to change the past, but Nikolai intervenes and tells her that it's already happened and that the only way to survive would be to get away from there, in the past, where the house can't touch them. But when they try, they get separated. Marie ends up in the back of the truck as her father drives away with the infants (herself and Nikolai), whereas Nikolai sees the form of his long lost love, Natalie.Her father stops at the barn, leaving one baby in a pig's pen to feed the baby to the boars, while he tries to drown the other in the boars' water tank. Neither he nor his wife (who he had thought was dead) see Marie. Her dying mother shoots her father in the head and grabs both babies, fleeing to the truck. Meanwhile Nikolai turns to see his lover is now actually his father and then is attacked by wild boars, fulfilling his destiny.Marie finds her father's now desiccated body in the farm, and is then pushed back into a pseudo-past where she realizes her father and the notary are one and the same. He's come back from the dead to lure his children to the hell he had created. She flees his office in the present and runs right into her past self as she comes up the steps, and continues to flee into the sunlight until she finds herself right back in the house, this time between the past the present, where the apparition of her father explains to her that he's always loved his children, and his wife, and couldn't let them leave him. She runs from him, down the hall and finds Nikolai's body, being eaten by the boars. As they tear off his nose and parts of his stomach, she vomits and falls against the wall. It's only when her doppleganger comes after her that she flees out to the truck parked out front and drives away.Her father's voice comes over the radio, telling her to come back and join the family he has created, and then promises to take her daughter, Emily (who is in the States) but it's too late. The bridge that brought her there has been destroyed, and Marie plunges into the lake, drowning, and fulfilling her destiny.The film ends with Marie's daughter (who we now realize is the narrator) explaining that she knew in her heart her mother would never return. It's been months since she left for Russia and in all this time she's never had the desire to know what happened to her, or her parents, thus breaking the cycle and leaving her... abandoned.

Tags: realism, murder, flashback

Review:
It deals with an American film producer named Marie (Anastasia Hille) goes back to her homeland, Russia (although shot in Bulgaria), where her mother's (Paraskeva) dead body has been found under strange circumstances.
And the cruel secret behind their family takes place at the end of the movie.This is a horror story with creepy atmosphere and plenty of twists and turns .
The motion picture is well written and directed by Nacho Cerda who create a powerful story that blends chills , thrills , suspense and familiar drama in a cleverly devised plot that certainly offers more than the usual terror film .
I did think the movie had a lot of credits at the beginning, the writing caught me off guard, but I like how when the family was speaking Russian we didn't get subtitles, that was cool, we don't need to know every word these folks are saying, just know that something bad is about to go down and it did.
Check out The Abandoned for a good time with friends, the movie is pretty solid in a day when a lot of these movies leave you wondering what you just wasted your darn money and time on, this one will keep you jumping and guessing the whole way through..
Spanish director Nacho Cerda's THE ABANDONED is like the beautiful, unholy marriage of Lucio Fulci (circa THE BEYOND) and Russian art-house master Andrei Tarkovsky -- if that sounds like some high-falutin' pretentious art/horror movie, think again: this film is so downright terrifying I spent half the movie with my hands over my eyes, and my brother confirmed it's one of the scariest flicks he's ever seen.
Set in the woods of Russia, where even the Olga boat man wouldn't show, the fright level of this film is high and the suspense will have you on the edge of your seat for the duration of the movie.
Further, they find that they are trapped in the house and can not leave the place."The Abandoned" is a frightening and creepy film of ghosts, with a nightmarish atmosphere but a dull story.
Definitely one of the most frightening films I have seen in years, thanks in part to great writing, acting, sound, cinematography, and a menacing electronic soundtrack by David Kristian, who IMHO is the future of horror film music.
Forget what you think you know about ghost stories, The Abandoned makes movies like An American Haunting and other recent supernatural flicks seem like kiddie fare.
Really sad to see good gems in the rough like this getting trashed by people that frankly shouldn't be reviewing movies, maybe I'm an elitist, I don't know, but I'm sorry, if you couldn't follow the story of The Abandoned, I really don't know what to say.This movie is kept from being a top tier creepy movie simply by pacing issues, that's probably my main problem with it which drags it's score into the 7 range (might as well be a 10 for the amount of drek horror made since the mid 90's).
This movie has impeccable atmosphere, the kind you can cut through with a knife which is oh so important for any great haunted house film.
The atmosphere itself was incredibly creepy, the director should have let the audience just stew in that a bit before getting right to the point so to speak within minutes of walking into the house, it really lessens the impact of the imagery and the antagonists in this movie, but doesn't destroy it by any means.What stood out the most to me is that it was a very original idea (as far as i know, I have never seen anything quite like it) and like The Baby's room, I love wildly original takes on my favorite horror genre, the haunted house movie.
yet we have people screaming "TOO SLOW TOO BORING" and 1 starring it so this is why character development is sadly all but dead in horror movies.The imagery and photography was fantastic, sound appropriately creepy if severely overdone at times but only a few times.Just see it.
Even if it doesn't scare you like it didn't scare me (i can count the movies on one hand that have achieved this, this is the holy grail of horror for me.), it's very creepy and quite unnerving and just an all around enjoyable flick.
It isn't Jack Ass and it is not Hills Have Eyes, The Abandoned is a well written and in my opinion an over all good suspense film that is getting over looked by the movie goer.
What I like is that it takes us on a journey to a part of the world where you know there was and is a lot of adoption abuse and other acts against humans going on and it tells a story of a home, a haunted past that won't rest until the family is all but gone.
Director Nacho Cerda got the most out of the 2 lead roles (Anastasia Hille and Karel Roden), I had never seen either one of them and I think they did a reasonably good job working out the kinks of the film.
The story is the only thing that really bothered me, I tried to stay with it but honestly there were some times that I did get a little lost but every time I found myself wondering what was going on, the characters answered my questions.
That's what The Abandoned is  a jerk who annoys you at their every opportunity.It's really too bad, because the concept that presents itself at the very end of the film is quite good.
This is a horror movie with some creepy atmosphere but just doesn't have a plot that is developed very well, but the twists was decent at times.
One of the original "After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For," (ADHF) and the only one to get a nationwide release in theaters, The Abandoned tells the story of an American movie producer (Marie) who receives word that she has inherited a house and land in the back woods of Russia.
Their birthday nearing, they prepare to face their dark past.This was my second time seeing this movie, and for some reason the first time I saw it I got the complete wrong idea about what happened at the end.
There are only 2 or 3 "phantoms" in the movie that don't show up very often, so most of the "scares" are through the suspense of not knowing when the next horrible thing is going to happen.I really love the setting of this film.
The dark woods, withered house, and misty lake all contribute to the chilling atmosphere...you couldn't really ask for a better set for a movie such as this.There aren't that many special effects, but for the most part they are above average.
There are really only two full characters in the movie, all others besides Marie and Nicolai can easily be considered extras (except maybe the main villain ghost thing, which gets a few minutes of screen time).
I'm not exactly sure how good of an actor Karel Roden (Nicolai) is because of his Russian accent, but he appears to be acceptable.The storyline was not my favorite, but when everything came together it ended up being a solid independent horror flick, definitely one of the better ADHF films.Final Score - 8/10.
We accompany her on this journey, and it takes us to a place that is as terrifying as any I've seen on screen.Much of the story is told through the clever use of light and sound, as are most good horror films.
This film worked for me for a number of reasons: it is story driven as well as effects driven, it has solid acting, great location shots, and a strangely, highly flawed script that does create interest.
The acting was quite alright, even if I wasn't sure what they were supposed to be doing half the time.I guess that's the thing -- if you want a confusing story about lost families and body doubles in Russia (or at least backwoods Russia) then you have found a winner for yourself.
The third, is that is tries to deal with time and an never ending cycle of terror that puts Marie (Anastasia Hille) into a returning course of horror.Remote Locations always make for good horror movies.
More like a mishmash of random scenes, haphazardly slapped together and drawn-out in an overlong way to artificially pad the movie to a feature length running-time.To end this review on a positive note, there *is* a good entertainment production called "The Abandoned".
That is also called "The Abandoned", but unlike the movie that shares it's title, Deep Space Nine's "The Abandoned" is chock-full of suspense, great acting, scary scenes, engrossing characters, and a wonderful story.
I'm going to go on the record as the second person who has, after years of using the IMDb to look up movies, been motivated by Nacho's film, The Abandoned to create an account and post a comment.
Best of all to be abandoned." Oh, the irony.A ghost story with all the technical refinements of a Hollywood horror film, but horrifyingly bad dialogue after the first quarter of the film, and you feel like you're being preached to from the start.It's as if the writers' cumulative character dialogue can be summed up by bad cop TV and a Jerry Springer show.
Abandon all hope to see original or genuinely petrifying new horror here, as Nacho Cerdà's American long-feature debut reverts to all the known and dreadfully overused clichés of ghost stories and haunted mansion tales, but doesn't succeed in showing a single shocking image or surprising plot twist.
Generally speaking, "The Abandoned" had great potential (I haven't mentioned the eerie scenery yet, like dolls and such) and easily could have been a small horror-triumph, but it sadly turned out a painful disappointment.
I really like this movie much better than I expected, I really like the start of the movie , the opening scene was very good.The first 20 minutes of the movie are quite slow, not boring at all, then the movie picks ups a lot of stuff happened for the rest of the movie,.I don't think this movie was scary or even that creepy however this movie did want to confuse you as it messing with your head.I like how the movie came to an end and I got the acting was really good.I am going to give this movie a 7/10.
This is very good visually, no spectacular special effects but lots of creepy visuals, but the plot isn't very good.The cast are quite good, they are all convincing and deliver solid performances although the dialogue is fairly uninspired.The pace is pretty good too, getting into the action very quickly and sustaining it, it become frenetic towards the end as you'd expect from a horror.The problem is the story, it isn't interesting or disturbing.
4) It's a good ghost story, even though you don't quite get it till near the end.What I did not like: 1) very few things, just some of the actions of the main characters do not make a lot of sense: ¿why go into an isolated and abandoned house in the middle of the night?
As a whole the film is much less than the sum of its parts; the storyline feels flabby and unfocused and the film as a whole has far too much of the characters just wandering around and not doing much.Nacho Cerda has the ability to shoot a dark and decrepit-looking movie and there's atmosphere here in spades, but it's the lack of a decent storyline which put me off.
By the way, the story supposedly takes place in Russia, even though it was actually filmed in Bulgaria and they didn't do a very good job hiding it.
It's not the first time that a movie supposedly takes place in one country and it is actually filmed somewhere else, but the problem is when the audience can notice this and...
It's the type of movie that leaves an impression with you, and there are so few horror films that deserve a fan's time..
This is a very tedious flick that has a secret, you want to know what the full story is, but at the same time- based on the character development thus far- there's a scary feeling that the plot's "gotchya" moment will be a dumb yawner that makes you go...
Cerda's 'The Abandoned' is a welcome throwback to a time where special effects and huge budgets were not needed to create a downright chilly horror movie.
I think it could have been better with a more cohesive story, but I liked the cinematography and overall it was an enjoyable film..
I have never been to Russia but I have seen plenty of news coverage from high school and other history stories from cold years past, this story and film is one of my favorite ghost or haunted house stories, right up there with "The Changling" Nacho Cerda does a great job moving to the full feature, bringing Anastasia Hille and Karel Roden together was a good combo on team.
I don't know how people can find this movie boring, you need to spend some time here and listen to all the ghost stories, this was true to form on some of ours, and the fact it takes place in cold Russia, leads me to think we will see more of these films from Europe coming in to the US market soon.
I thought that The Abandoned was a good horror film.
The acting was good, the cinematography was great, brilliant idea to have an old abandoned Russian farm house for the stage.
I was glad to see a foreign film like this get play in the United States, it was obvious to me that the film wasn't an original from the States, it had a totally cool feel to it, the Director, Nacho Cerda got the most he could out of the crew and the actors, this movie had it all, good complex story, good setting, and it was pretty graphic at times.
It wasn't way over the top with gore or teenage horror or what we have come to expect in that area but we were all OK with that, we felt like it was a thinking man's hockey game, not all blood and guts but something that at the end had a real message about how we treat those who are abandoned and how they must feel, without answers in some terrible circle over and over again.
Second time around on this one, I still think it is worth it, the film was scary and a movie like I haven't seen in years, mostly due to great writing, acting, sound, cinematography, and location.
If you like to see a movie that makes you think as well as takes you on a journey you won't soon forget, then The Abandoned is the one you have been waiting for!.
I think this film is a really good horror/thriller..
The terrifying mood and atmosphere of the film is carefully and masterfully woven by Nacho, who clearly knows how to really make a horror movie.the abandoned is without a doubt one of the most bizarre, beautiful , original and scariest films I have seen in the past few years.
It is a film that, over the course of the years will manage to scare the living hell out of its audiences.the best horror movie about a woman going back to reclaim what is hers.
It's so sad that the film ended up such a disaster because it had everything else going for it.There is truly a lot great skill and talent within this movie.
The sets were amazing the mood was creepy, the actors were intense and involved, and the cinematography was one continuous beautiful metaphor, but without out a story that brings everything together and convincingly and completely pulls the viewer into the movies reality, it can be nothing more than a failed attempt at making a true horror film..
It is simply a haunted house movie, a bit like "The Shining", with there really being nothing new being added to the table other than the fact it is set in Russia.
This film is horror strong and a great see, you wont be playing the fool if you watch this movie.
Probably one of the few best supernatural horror films of the past few years, "The Abandoned" is a refreshing and scary movie.
and history is about to repeat itself and take their lives, just as it was originally supposed to forty years earlier.The scariest supernatural thriller I've seen in quite a long time, "The Abandoned" is a unique and wonderfully crafted horror film that is reminiscent of the classic ghost stories of the '70s and '80s, but with an interesting and satisfying spin on it.
The Russian countryside is an eerie location (although the movie was filmed in Bulgaria) to set the story and there are many simplistic but effective shots used throughout.
The semi-shocker of a conclusion was a brilliant and effective way to end the movie, and wasn't what I was expecting.Overall, "The Abandoned" is an intense and atmospheric horror film that is sure to please fans of old-school supernatural films.
Definitely my favorite horror film of this year (so far), and probably the best supernatural-horror movie I've seen in a very long time.
What Decent Horror Should Be. This is what a decent haunted house movie should be like.
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.
I honestly think that all of these great reviews are a result of people seeing this movie at Horrorfest (8 Films to Die For).