The scariest movie in years, "The Abandoned" bristles with the bloodthirsty nihilism of Rob Zombie's "Devils Rejects" while conjuring up ghost-story spookiness of long-lost classics like "Web of the Spider." It is, to put it simply, a totally kick-ass horror movie that should be seen by every self-respecting fear film fan.
Director Nacho Cerdà is best known for his controversial 1994 film "Aftermath" and hasn't been on the horror scene since this masterpiece turned up. This film surpasses "High Tension" in sheer fear volume and is miles better than even "The Descent." But it saw very limited release in the U.S.
Hille plays an American film producer who returns to her Russian homeland, where her mother's dead body has recently been discovered under bizarre circumstances. Having inherited an old, decripit house, she heads out to visit it. Naturally, local superstitions state that the area is damned. Only one man will embark on such a dangerous and long journey -- a stranger that oddly seems to know quite a bit about her history.
Shortly after her arrival to one of the spookiest houses to grace the silver screen since Hell House, the guide mysteriously disappears, forcing our heroine to explore the derelict location alone. After passing a white-eyed ghost of herself in the halls, she wakes up to meet someone else on the property: Nikolai, who claims to have been lured there as she had been. He, too, has a ghost doppelganger on the grounds.
It's rare that a movie scares me. Last one to do it was Zombie's "Devil's Rejects." This one actually surpassed that film for the most part. It was scary. I had forgotten how good ghost stories could be. Director Cerdà captures everything that was right with classics like "Web of the Spider" -- which shares a lot of similarities with this movie, and (perhaps not coincidentally) it was directed by a Spaniard as well -- but amps up the horror so it reaches an almost unbearable crescendo. There's "Web of the Spider," "Evil Dead," "The Shining," even some "Creepshow" sprinkled into this movie. But it holds some of its greatest similarities to the sublime "Session 9."
Cerdà brings in the best the genre has to offer and mixes it together to deliver a nice, nice, scary-as-hell horror movie. "The Abandoned" will go down as a classic of this decade.
One of the I mean THE dumbest movies i have ever seen. it starts out ok then gets worse if you haven't seen this movie don't try.
Posted by Randy Hall on January 14, 2008
Its also a very big insult to say its like Rob Zombie's devil's Rejects
Posted by Dan Nyberg on March 1, 2008
Devil's Rejects was scary?? As far as I recall, I fell asleep durng it.
Posted by shaolin on March 18, 2008
Posted by Bryan on May 15, 2008
It was okay, but it wasn't the greatest. It's not one that I am going to rush out and buy, but it was worth watching.
Posted by tony on June 15, 2008
i have to say that the devils rejects was by far the worst thing put to film and to say that anything is better, is to compare shit to gold, so this film could just be average
Posted by GUTHRIE on June 21, 2008
I AGREE 100%.
Posted by TheGunslinger on October 19, 2008
The Devils Rejects is amazing, anyone who says otherwise is 100 percent gay.
Posted by DannX on May 23, 2009
STOP using GAY as synonym for STUPID, yoy fat ass!
Rank this film on a '666 scale' of one to six (left to right). Based on 1332 votes.
