Abandoned
Though not a pandemic movie by name, Spencer Squire’s “Abandoned” could easily be mistaken for one. With an extremely limited cast and single setting production, it feels like the type of work created by a small group of people who simply wanted to keep working as things grew more dangerous outside. I generally enjoy confined setting two handers, so I was prepared to get swept up in “Abandoned,” to feel as trapped as its doomed heroine obviously would.
Unfortunately, Squire’s debut becomes incrementally less effective over time, with bad filmmaking and weak storytelling eventually sealing its fate. You can tell that this is one of those projects where both the set-up and the finale were clearly well-considered, but that bulk of the film the connective material was not. Instead of building tension or maintaining a minor stakes atmosphere even once things start going bump in the night (or behind the walls), Squire seems content to just kind of let it sit there. And so it abandons her.
That would be Sara (Emma Roberts), who we first meet when she moves into a remote farmhouse with her husband Alex (John Gallagher Jr.) and their infant son. It’s clear from minute one that Sara is dealing with post-partum depression although the whole film is something of an allegory for that condition, too often it fails to feel empathetic enough towards her for us to understand what’s really going on but still never thinks twice about leaving a woman who can’t stop crying in the middle of nowhere while he’s off doing hours of remote farm work.
But then again, “Abandoned” isn’t really about a troubled mother; it’s about a house with A Past they just happen to rent from someone too lazy to change the locks before showing them around.
It turns out there are doors they’ve never seen before (one behind another wardrobe they hadn’t noticed before), and they only come across them after having signed the lease. That’s around the same time Sara starts hearing sounds behind the walls and receiving visits from a creepy neighbor (Michael Shannon), who knows a thing or two about the place.
Only in a few scenes, Shannon appears as if he’s visiting from an entirely different movie something better for which he did a favor to a friend and co-starred with them in “Heart of Champions.” There is haunted register in this man’s cadence and body language that gives “Abandoned” weight, but it’s not nearly enough to save Erik Patterson and Jessica Scott’s manipulative, dull screenplay. Gallagher has no character to work with and Roberts is forced to play post-partum depression as horror trope; just because it was made during the pandemic doesn’t mean you should feel sick once it ends.
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