The Abandoned (2015) (aka: Confined) Jason Patric, Louisa Krause, Mark Margolis, Ezra Knight Movie Review

The Abandoned (2015)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Louisa Krause in The Abandoned (2015) (aka: Confined)

Patric does a Patrick

With her life in a mess, Streak (Louisa Krause) takes a job as a night shift security guard at a now empty apartment building. The immediate downside of this job is having to work with Cooper (Jason Patric), a sarcastic security guard who has been doing the job for years and acts like an a-hole most of the time. But as Streak tries to maintain a level of professionalism she finds monitoring the dark halls of this old but grand building unsettling as they play on her already fragile mental state. When Streak learns that the building use to be a children's hospital she fears the spirits of the dead children are roaming the place.

I didn't keep track of the time but I reckon 20 minutes in to "The Abandoned", which in the UK is knock as "Confined", nothing had happened. Oh we meet Streak in a cab seemingly a little emotional, we have seen the grand nature of what looks more like a library than an apartment building and we have met Cooper, but that is it. And the biggest thing you will take from these 20 minutes is that director Eytan Rockaway has seriously stretched things out.

Jason Patric in The Abandoned (2015) (aka: Confined)

But the "horror" starts as Streak starts to have visions as she walks around the old building and she learns of its past at which point any horror fan starts ask surely they've done the old children's hospital story to death. Yes some of the shocks are good and some of the actions of the characters are a bit mysterious as are character choices such as having Cooper in a wheelchair. But the overwhelming feeling is that we have been here before when it comes to the spirits of a medical facility and no matter how impressive a building may look with its huge stairs and never ending corridors it will be familiar.

But then you get to the end of "The Abandoned" and it is there that the twist comes and you are either going to be impressed or feel cheated by all that has come before. Personally I felt cheated but I also began wondering whether they made this horror movie about an old children's hospital and realised how generic it was, so tried to be clever by adding on a twist ending which changed everything which came before.

What this all boils down to is that "The Abandoned" didn't do it for me and for the most found it to be an incredibly generic and drawn out horror movie. But it is a movie which is all about the twist which comes at the end which whilst not doing it for me may do it for others.


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