The Abandoned

I have no idea how I’ve missed this, but The Abandoned (2006) is one of those rare movies that riveted me.  It helps if you’re not of the group that expects explosions or flying body parts every 2.3 minutes.  This movie gives a slow, but continuous, build of tension.

It stars Anastasia Hille as Marie and Karl Roden as Nicolai.  I really enjoyed the work of both of these actors in the movie.  So much so that, by the end of the movie, I really wanted to see more of them.  The locale (set in Russia, filmed in Bulgaria) is both beautiful and subtly ominous.   The film’s soundtrack is another rare work of being non-intrusive, yet aiding in building the tension.

Marie had been adopted by an American couple when she was a baby.  She returns to Russia to visit her family’s home (which she inherited after her mother died several years before and which she finds out about through a notary in Russia).

Her arrival at the notary’s office is when things get weird.  And wonderful.  And creepy.  And confusing.

Marie meets Nicolai (the brother she didn’t know she had) at the family farm and their dive into family history begins.

While it’s unclear just what the overall story is (zombies, ghosts, undead, an unending time loop???), it’s a trip worth taking.  It’s fascinating and keeps you watching and, at the end, leaves you wondering.  There may be cultural beliefs/legends that might fill in the blanks that, as an American viewer, I don’t know.

Several notes of caution:

There is some brief nudity.  There is one particularly disturbing scene regarding Nicolai’s death.  And, while this isn’t a first-person shaky-cam movie, shaky-cam is used to effect in a couple of scenes.  One of those scenes goes on for a bit.  While I normally hate it, it was well-done and added to a sense of disorientation.  I was surprised to not mind it.

If you like a decent, suspenseful thriller, you won’t be disappointed.  There are some wonderful moments in it, it’s well-acted, it delivers (except for the storyline), and the actors bring something to it that you don’t often see.  They just are perfect for their roles.

The Secret Village

Everyone involved in making The Secret Village did bad and they should feel bad.  Very, very bad.  If this movie is any indication, they feel nothing.  Do you know that person that sucks the life out of a room the minute he or she walks in?  The Secret Village is the cinematic version of that person.

Two characters named Greg and Rachel end up sharing a house and investigating something that is either mass hysteria or, possibly, witchcraft in a small town.  A bunch of really stupid script writing happens, there’s some really bad editing decisions made,  and someone’s idea of what makes something suspenseful gets taken out back and shot.  That was the movie I saw.

There’s some attempt at creativity with…I don’t know…time, I guess.  But it feels like someone tried extrapolating the idea of “shaky cam” to create something called “shaky time” and it’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Plot lines develop, almost.  Then never go anywhere.  Characters have no personality, no motivation, appear and disappear for no reason.  And the soundtrack?  I can’t even anything about the soundtrack.

Now, the movie the director/producer/actors/etc. wanted me to see is another story.  What that story is, I cannot begin to comprehend based on what I saw and heard.

There are some bad mistakes that not even a rookie would make.  Like placing a call with a cell phone and, instead of hearing the standard tone you’d hear from the earpiece, you hear the recipient’s ringtone.  I’d expect something like that in something from the Scream franchise.  But as a point of humor.  Not as a serious moment in the movie.  The characters cast as the “bad” guys, are so freaking inept at being threatening that it is almost humorous.  But it’s not.  It’s just apathetic.

My ability to enjoy a movie in the moment and not try to figure out the ending was completely thwarted by this movie.  Being generous, I had it figure out in 30 minutes.  And was sorely disappointed to be right.

If you could extract the the dullest parts of ennui, boredom, lethargy, and mediocrity and combine them into some new even more listless sensation, you would still have something more exciting than this movie.

You could give a six-year old child a film editing machine (don’t do that!) and access to Plan 9 From Outerspace, Birdemic, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  That kid would put together something more compelling than this movie.  Hell, you could have the kid’s movie dubbed into Swahili and then have that translated and subtitled into Swedish and that would make more sense than The Secret Village.