| Movie of the Day - 11/28/2006 |
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Horrorfest - The Abandoned
I have to admit that this film is really what peaked my interest in Horrorfest for the simple fact that it was the feature-film debut of director Nacho Cerda. After all the hub-bub of Cerda's short film Aftermath, I quickly got my hands on a copy of it when it was released on DVD. While I didn't find Aftermath as shocking as others (the subject matter has been done before and loses a bit of that shock each time someone else revisits it), I do have to say that it was one of the more beautifully shot films on necrophilia I've seen (and yes, that was just as strange to write that as I'm sure it was to read).
It was his third short film on the DVD titled Genesis that really caught my eye. Again, the subject matter of an artist mourning the loss of his love by putting his life (literally) into his sculpture of her has been done before. However, as with the other shorts on the DVD, Cerda did away with any dialogue and let the visuals tell the story and emotions of the artist. I found extremely compelling and magnificently done. The work by cinematographer Xavi Gimenez should also be praised, who also did wonderful work on Jaume Balaguero's The Nameless and recently on Brad Anderson's The Machinist.
Cerda and Gimenez re-teamed for The Abandoned and again provided a wonderful atmosphere for the film. The story follows a woman who returns to Russia in search of her past. After learning that her mother died some years ago, she is given the key to the farmhouse her family owned and decides to visit it to learn more about where she came from. There, she meets a brother she never knew she had. Oddly, they start to become haunted by ghosts of themselves and they fight against time to find out what is happening before they become those ghosts.
The Abandoned plays out a bit like an old Twilight Zone story with twists and turns as it goes. Once again, the film is best described as a psychological horror film (why After Dark Films didn't just say, "These are psychological horror films!" is still beyond me, as I would have been there even quicker). While some might find the pacing to be a bit slow, I found it refreshing to find a director that took his time to unravel the story.
Atmosphere in horror has become overburdened with clichés and much-of-the-same lately, so it always nice to find a film like The Abandoned that knows the power of the art. In fact, the simple shots of the woman riding through the countryside to the farmhouse immediately brought to mind the sweeping shots of the countryside in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, perhaps because the shots and music were very similar. The farmhouse and the forest that surrounded it also added a great deal of claustrophobia and isolation to the film.
Now comes the odd statement. I can't quite say that The Abandoned was my favorite film of the festival, but I wouldn't be surprised if turns out to be in the long run. You see The Abandoned is one of those films that I will re-watch probably several times to digest everything it has to offer. While a couple of the others might get a repeat viewing just because I liked them, this is the type of film that I think I will appreciate more and more each time I watch it.
The Abandoned is also one of the main reasons I declare Horrorfest a success. More than likely, if it hadn't been for After Dark Films putting on this little mini-marathon of horror, films like The Abandoned would probably not get a theatrical release in the United States. I hope this is not the case for future films by Nacho Cerda who definitely has my attention now.
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November 28, 2006, 3:06 pm |
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