The Abandoned (film)
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| The Abandoned | |
|---|---|
 US version of the film poster |
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| Directed by | Nacho Cerdà |
| Produced by | Carlos Fernández, Julio Fernández |
| Written by | Nacho Cerdà, Karim Hussain, Richard Stanley |
| Starring | Anastasia Hille, Carlos Reig, Valentin Ganev, Karel Roden |
| Music by | Alfons Conde, David Kristian |
| Cinematography | Xavi Giménez |
| Editing by | Jorge Macaya |
| Distributed by |  20th Century FoxAfter Dark Films Lionsgate .svg/22px-Flag_of_Belgium_(civil).svg.png){kind=small} Buena Vista International UIP Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 19, 2007 - DVD |
| Running time | 94 min (USA), 96 min (Canada) |
| Country |  Spain |
| Language | English |
| Official website | |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
- For the 1955 Italian film released in the US under this title, see The Abandoned (1955 film).
The Abandoned is a 2006 horror film about an American film producer who returns to her homeland, Russia, to discover the truth about her family history.
[edit] Plot
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
A Russian peasant family is sitting down to dinner when a run-down, overheating truck comes to a halt in the front yard. The father opens the door to find a now dead woman, obviously murdered, and two crying infants in the seat next to her.
Fast forward 40 years. We meet Marie Jones, an older, blonde woman who has been summoned back to Russia by a notary who claims to have found her long dead parents, and the home they once owned, the Kardinovsky Farm. As she mounts the steps to his office, she runs into someone, but brushes it off.
After meeting with the notary, who explains he found no brothers or sisters, she sets out to visit and claim her parent's home. She arrives at the very peasant house her mother died at, and is "attacked" by a now very, very old mother, who, in Russian, insists she doesn't go to the Kardinovsky Farm. They're interrupted by Anitoly, her guide, the only person willing to venture, at night, to the farm.
The farm is on what they call the "island", which is a small parcel of land surrounded by the river, only accessible with a single bridge. After hours of driving (we can surmise it takes about a day, since they started out at 8am and arrive at night), they cross the bridge and stop just a few yards from the house, hidden from view. Anitoly tells Marie to stay put while he makes sure there are no animals between them and the house.
Marie waits, and then sees what appears to be Anitoly ahead of her, but when she leaves the truck, she finds herself alone. Within minutes the truck dies, leaving the forest quiet.
With no one around, and no where else to go, she enters her parent's very dirty and decrepit house armed only with a flashlight, and begins to investigate. While exploring the ground floor, she hears a bang and a child wailing from upstairs, and rushes up as quickly as possible to see...nothing. She enters the nearest room, a nursery, and sees, out of the corner of her eye, a woman walking past the door.
When she runs into the hallway, calling out in Russian to stop, she sees the same blond woman turn into another room, and she follows only to scream as she comes face to face with her dead self who appears to be very real, and soaked to the bone. She runs out the door in time to see the truck (and presumably Anitoly), leave and in a panic chases him and falls down a hill and into the river, slowly drowning as she can't swim.
She wakes up in a much warmer and brighter lit room in the house. There is a man (Nikolai), rifling through her wallet and examining what he finds. Marie isn't too happy after her experience with her other self, and smacks him across the face with a log, then flees the room.
He chases her and explains that he is her brother - he too was summoned by the notary. She is of course, skeptical, as the notary had told her she had no brothers or sisters, but when he takes her upstairs and shows her their cribs (her real name is Milla), she realizes he is telling the truth.
She tells him what she saw and he explains (later), that seeing your doppleganger is a sign of death - and that you die in the same manner they did. They can't kill you and you can't harm them as you only harm yourself.
Very quickly they meet Nikolai's ghost - a bloody, ravaged body, and they both realize they have to get out of the house and off the island. As they get ready to flee, Nikolai falls through a hole in the floor and vanishes, leaving Marie alone. She returns upstairs, determined to find anything to explain what is happening. Upstairs in her parents room, she witnesses some of the events of the past as she watches her father stab her mother to death on their bed. Screaming, she turns to find her doppleganger behind her, yet again. This time it catches her in the babies room and seems to suck out part of her life, leaving her gasping and disoriented. She says "f this", and flees the house.
There is a boat on one side of the river, and she takes it to the other side, leaving the island, and her dead self (watching from the shore), behind her. Unfortunately, it's too late, and as she runs through the forest, she finds herself before the house again.
This time when she enters, she finds the dining room is suddenly...clean and neat, much as it was decades before. At the table, looking morosely at a birthday cake, is an injured Nikolai. He didn't die, but merely fell into the basement through the floor. He explains to Marie that he's figured out what is going on - they were never meant to have left the house in the first place. They were supposed to have died with their mother all those years ago, and now, on the eve of their birthday, the house has called them back to fulfill their destinies at midnight.
When the clock strikes midnight, the entire house returns to the state is was in 1966, and they hear their father enter the house. Marie tries to intercept, hoping to change the past, but Nikolai intervenes, telling her that it's already happened, and that the only way to survive would be to get away from there, in the past, where the house can't touch them. But when they try, they get separated. Marie ends up in the back of the truck as her father drives away with the infants (herself and Nikolai), whereas Nikolai sees the form of his long lost love, Natalie.
Her father stops at the barn, leaving one baby in a pig's pen to feed the baby to the boars, while he tries to drown the other. He, nor his wife (who he had thought was dead), see Marie. Her dying mother shoots her father in the head and grabs both babies, fleeing to the truck, while Nikolai turns to see his lover is now actually his father, and then is attacked by wild boars, fulfilling his doppleganger.
Marie finds her father's now desiccated body in the farm, and is then pushed back into a pseudo-past where she realizes her father and the notary are one in the same. He's come back from the dead to lure his children to the hell he had created. She flees his office in the present and runs right into her past self as she comes up the steps, and continues to flee into the sunlight until she finds herself right back in the house, this time between the past the present, where the apparition of her father explains to her that he's always loved his children, and his wife, and couldn't let them leave him. She runs from him, down the hall and finds Nikolai's body, being eaten by the boars. As they tear off his nose and parts of his stomach, she vomits and falls against the wall. It's only when his dead self comes after her that she flees out to the truck parked out front and drives away.
Her father's voice comes over the radio, telling her to come back and join the family he has created, and then promises to take her daughter, Emily (who is in the States) but it's too late. The bridge that brought her there has been destroyed, and she plunges into the lake, drowning, and fulfilling her destiny.
The film ends with her daughter (who we now realize is the narrator from the beginning), explaining that she knew in her heart her mother would never return. It's been months since she left for Russia, and in all this time, she's never had the desire to know what happened to her, or her parents, thus breaking the cycle, and leaving her...abandoned.
[edit] Release
The Abandoned was first released in the US as part of the After Dark Horrorfest in November 2006. The film received a stand alone release in theaters in February 2007. The DVD was released on June 19, 2007.
[edit] External links
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