Studio: Vertical Entertainment
Director: Spencer Squire
Writer: Erik Patterson, Jessica Scott
Producer: Robert Ogden Barnum, Eric Binns, Byron Wetzel
Stars: Emma Roberts, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Shannon
Review Score:
Summary:
A mother suffering from postpartum depression questions her haunting experiences after moving into a farmhouse with a troubled history.
Review:
It used to be that we always knew exactly which actors, B-grade and below, were immediate red flags warning us to stay away from a B-movie. It was a different story when they were in their primes. But in 2022 and beyond, a cast headlined by Malcolm McDowell, Eric Roberts, Lance Henriksen, and Michael Madsen is a dead giveaway that they’re going to be dead weight in a DOA DTV disaster.
Apparently, we now have to be cautious with bigger names too. Previously, Emma Roberts, John Gallagher Jr., and certainly Michael Shannon would have been three reasons to watch just about anything. But “Abandoned” teaches us that no matter how many top tier projects and award nominations this trio might have between them, even they aren’t above slumming it in a completely clichéd clownshow that’s somewhere between made-for-cable filler and a Redbox dust-collector, just with performers you’ve actually heard of.
New parents Sara and Alex could be played by pretty much anyone with a SAG card, yet they’re portrayed by Roberts and Gallagher, who give the couple the collective chemistry of two strangers who met for the time about an hour before the camera started rolling. He’s starting a veterinarian business and she’s raising their newborn son Liam, so naturally they need a new house. With “Abandoned” being bathed face to feet in typical horror tropes, this of course means that house will be in a remote location, it will have a hush-hush history, and they’re in such a rush to move in that no one does so much as test a single faucet, let alone explore the home for hidden nooks they won’t uncover until later.
The realtor begrudgingly discloses that a young woman, Anna, murdered her baby, her father, and then herself 40 years ago in the home, but says nothing about a boy who belonged to the same family. Sara and Alex find out about this boy’s existence when they find a locked door, because again, why would anyone ever inspect an entire property prior to purchasing it, and discover an abandoned bedroom behind said door.
In walks Michael Shannon playing, what else, an unsettling weirdo visibly haunted by an undisclosed trauma. Gee, could he be the unknown boy who is now an adult? His age fits and there are only three main actors in the movie, making the answer obvious, but why not drag out this nonexistent mystery for a minute or 60 first?
When I say “in walks Michael Shannon,” I mean it literally. Sara and Alex barely have the bedroom door open and Shannon is right behind them, having entered the house uninvited while claiming he is a next-door neighbor whose knock wasn’t heard. Sara and Alex are only mildly startled by his sudden appearance, and the only thing they learn is his name before Alex ultimately walks him out. More curiously, they don’t even say anything to each other about Shannon or his weirdness after he leaves. Not so much as a, “Hey, that was really bizarre when that strange man whom we know nothing about just barged right into the room, wasn’t it?”
Shannon continues creeping back into the movie every ten minutes or so to say something cryptic or to say nothing at all as Sara pieces together the puzzle we already solved well before the first act finished. I chalked up Shannon’s curious cameo in “Night’s End” (review here) as a one-off appearance in low-end genre fare, possibly done as a favor for someone. Let’s hope “Abandoned” isn’t the second stop in a troubling trend of Shannon playing beneath his pay grade in straight-to-streaming schlock.
“Abandoned” positions itself as a moody slow-burn, except there’s no atmosphere to set up anything suggestively sinister. The house is as plain as can be. Sara’s greatest fear involves her breast pump, because she worries about being unable to bond with her baby if she can’t nourish him naturally. When her postpartum depression starts paralleling Anna’s story, Sara starts questioning haunting hallucinations as she’s scared by things like cutting her finger on a nail, flies swarming a pile of dirty diapers, maggots in her milk, and a montage where she frantically searches for a missing pacifier to music hilariously scored for the intensity of a “Fast and the Furious” car chase. You know, the kinds of suspenseful scenes with high stakes that put the “thrill” in “psychological thriller.” And while Sara gets spooked by slow zooms into shadows on walls or by muffled noises on the other side of a door, Alex deals with a local farmer’s sick pigs in a B-plot that’s less entertaining than CCTV footage from a town hall meeting where residents discuss where to put a Stop sign.
The title tells you exactly what to do with “Abandoned” as it isn’t even a movie worth watching while playing on your phone. It’s poorly edited pabulum whose draining dryness makes it a total waste of time. What’s worse, by being somehow able to break all known laws of space and time, “Abandoned” wastes what seems like six hours even though it’s only 95 minutes long.
Review Score: 15
At least the movie only runs 70 minutes, though I suppose that extra 10 technically disqualifies it from being a literal amateur hour.