The Abandoned
By Cory Peynado, Blockbuster.co.uk

Director Nacho Cerdà skillfully drops us in to one of the most frightening places we could imagine and cruelly locks the door behind us, in the new film ‘The Abandoned’ The terrifying story of an adopted woman who returns to the family home that she never knew to face the mystery that lies inside.

A lot of the new fancy-pants ghost stories aren’t really cutting it these days, don’t want to mention any names but it seems that modern special effects have been depriving us of the more natural elements. A creaky door, a bump in the darkness or even the classic spider web, I mean these are the things that got us into scary movies in the first place, cue… The Abandoned.

American movie producer Marie Jones (Hille) has been trying to find out about her birth parents for over 40 years. She was born in Russia but raised in the UK before making her way to L.A., and because adoption records back in 60’s Russia were less than reliable, it’s been an almost continuous uphill battle. Then one day she gets a telegram that she has inherited a piece of land in Russia once owned by her birth mother and makes the trip she hopes will answer all her questions.

When she gets to the isolated farm once owned by her parents, she finds it in a state of ruin and disrepair, having not housed anyone since her mother’s murder shortly after Marie’s birth. The farm is located on an island that’s only accessible by a bridge and to date no one has been brave enough to try and reclaim it, letting it go back to nature instead.

She’s driven there by a man who soon disappears, forcing her to examine the desolate old farm on her own. Soon after entering she comes face to face with her own doppelganger, a dead version of herself who is soaked to the bone and does nothing but stare with wide, cataract-filled eyes. Marie understandably freaks out and runs off into the woods, falling down an embankment into the icy river below.

She’s rescued from one watery death by Nikolai (Roden), a man who claims to be her twin brother who’s there for the same reason she is… answers, and has been in the house a few days already. He’s seen his own walking corpse as well, and when the two of them come face to face with their dead selves and try to fight them, they quickly and painfully learn that whatever is done to their doubles happens to them.

Nikolai theorizes that their doubles are there to take them to the other side as the old superstition goes that if you see your doppelganger, it means you’re going to die, so the two of them try to piece the story together of just what happened to their mother on the night of her murder and why their own lives are now in danger because of it.

Despite being a man with nearly 13 fully grown hairs on my chest this one still managed to creep me out. It follows all the scary-movie rules right down to the bone but then just when you think you have everything figured out it comes back to creep you out even more. The spooky house was admittedly a little familiar, and maybe the premise has been seen a couple of times before, but I think people will get a kick out of the new scares in store here.

The characters do what we would all do in those kinds of situations and nothing in this film seems too contrived or silly which is what I was initially afraid of. The story and ending might seem a bit easy for some but most will find this an enjoyable watch. Enjoy.