Review of The Abandoned (2006) by Lina . — 29 Nov 2011

Not half bad...

It had suspense, some surprises & a few jump in your seat moments...

It's not a horror movie in the sense that it's about the potential violence, the gore & the bodies racking up...but more along the lines of seeing your own death in this creepy, alternate reality kinda way...

It's like this...

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.

Fast forward 40 years. 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: the Kardinovsky Farm. 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 blond woman turn into another room and she follows only to scream as she comes face to face with her dead self 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, sice 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...

Now the race is on to try and escape their own death's...