Starring: Anastasia Hille, Karel Roden
Rating: 7/10
Directed By: Nacho Cerda
Runtime: 94 minutes
For a horror connoisseur, The Abandoned is somewhat of an event. It’s the feature directorial debut of Nacho Cerda, who has produced two of the most impressive horror shorts of the past 20 years (Aftermath, Genesis), and it is written by two of the genre’s most underrated talents: Richard Stanley (Dust Devil, Hardware) and Karim Hussain (Subconscious Cruelty). It’s simple premise and creepy setting has all the earmarks of a classic in the making. Unfortunately, its commercial sensibilities get in its way.
Anyone familiar with the works of Cerda and Hussain know that their work is very much akin to the Cinema of Transgression. For anyone unfamiliar with the Cinema of Transgression, it’s a cinematic movement started by New York artists like Nick Zedd and Richard Kern in the mid-80s. It’s film as art; film without boundaries. It’s purveyors are Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. Most transgressive artists have an anarchistic spirit and few have shown this side more readily than both Cerda and Hussain. Cerda’s most famous work is Aftermath which is a beautiful 30-minute short about an autopsy that devolves into mutilation and ultimately necrophilia. Hussain’s debut was the brilliant but graphic Subconscious Cruelty which dealt with themes like sexual perversion and Christianity, sometimes at the same time. It was a deeply disturbing film that contained no defined narrative structure but engaged with its bizarre imagery and disturbing acts of incest and bodily dismemberment. Both films are required viewing for any true cineaste.
As one can imagine, these men don’t fit comfortably into the studio system so attempting to make a standard haunted house film with both involved should prove to be either a muddled disaster or a work of cinematic genius. Unfortunately, the finished product is a muddled work of cinematic genius.
Anastasia Hille plays Marie who is visiting Russia from the states in an attempt to find out more about her lineage. Marie was adopted as a child and, until now, she was unable to locate any information on the family that gave her up. After meeting with a Russian lawyer, Marie is provided the keys to her family’s estate and the remainder of the film concerns her time within the creepy manse. Around the halfway mark, Marie is confronted by a man that may or may not be her brother (Karel Roden) as well as what would appear to be her own doppelganger.
The most disappointing aspect of the film is the script. Hussain and Stanley could have taken the time to create a script that supplanted a number of the genre conventions we’ve all grown accustomed to but instead they, more often then not, embrace said conventions. It’s a frustrating decision by two men that are capable of much more. With a weak script bogging it down, it becomes Cerda’s movie to save and he comes dangerously close to doing that. There are enough of his transgressive characteristics on display to save the film from becoming yet another genre exercise. The lighting and staging of particular sequences build up the proper number of chills and, as his fans would expect, he never shies away from the gore.
The Abandoned is better than 95% of the horror movies being made and, had I gone in blind, I probably would have given it at least one additional point. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, their previous works seem to have set my expectations to high. With that being said, The Abandoned is an absolute must see for any fan of the horror genre.