The Abandoned (2006) Unearthed Films Blu-ray Review

Verdict

3.5

Summary

It’s not fun in any way, but it’s never boring and remains imminently watchable. I can see why it was chosen to have a life of its own apart from the After Dark bunch of films, and it’s aged quite well, so horror fans should appreciate it, even now.

Plot:

A woman goes to Russia to piece together the mystery of her adoption as a baby and finds a terrible secret.

Review:

Marie (Anastasia Hille) is a 40 year-old Hollywood movie producer with unanswered questions about where she came from, who her parents were, and how she came to be adopted out of Russia, her homeland. She goes to Russia and gets some paperwork from the adoption agency and this leads her to a farm in rural Russia where she finds an abandoned region where she is apparently from. There, she runs into a mysterious man named Nicolai (Karel Roden) who is somehow connected to her and the oddly under populated area. Together, they venture forth into the unknown, going perhaps too far into the past, finding that the area is cursed and almost like a vortex where the past and the present collide. They encounter undead doppelgängers of themselves, and it becomes clear that they’ve unearthed a grisly secret that is directly related to them both: Not only are they brother and sister (not a spoiler), but they are doomed to uncover a horrible truth about themselves and their parents.

I vividly remember seeing this theatrically in November 2006 as part of the “8 Horror Films to Die For After Dark Horror Fest,” which was the first of a handful of years when After Dark did these 8 Horror film fests. I went to all of them (all of them, year after year), and this particular film sort of stood out because of its somber, downbeat qualities, and somehow this was the film that “won” the fest because it was chosen to be re-released a few months later as a standalone film. I hadn’t seen it since then, so watching it again for this review I was impressed by its direction (from Nacho Cerda) with its crisp cinematography, chilly atmosphere and overall creepy approach to the genre. It’s not fun in any way, but it’s never boring and remains imminently watchable. I can see why it was chosen to have a life of its own apart from the After Dark bunch of films, and it’s aged quite well, so horror fans should appreciate it, even now.

Unearthed Films recently released a Blu-ray of The Abandoned, and it’s nicely presented in vivid high definition with a bunch of bonus features that should give fans and newcomers plenty of distractions.

Bonus Materials