The Abandoned Year: 2006 Director: Nacho Cerda Written by: Karim Hussain, Nacho Cerda, Richared Stanley Threat: Ghost Weapon of Choice: Pigs Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Colour Language: English Country of Origin: Spain IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
Please see the After Dark Horrorfest series page.

Rish's Reviews
Ah, The Abandoned from the After Dark Horrorfest. This may be a really short review, or another of my long sprawling ones. Right now, I'd prefer to be brief.
An American woman born in Russia goes back to her birthplace, having been told she inherited the ancestral home. She hopes to sort out exactly who she is and what happened in her past. When she goes to the house, though, she finds a man who claims to be her twin brother, and something much more horrible (not that twin brothers are horrible, mind you): a ghastly groping apparition that looks remarkably like she does . . . or would after a painful death.
This flick was chilling. There's about a twenty minute span here where it was almost unbearably scary. And we saw it in tyranist's den, with a light on, and with most of the unfriendly spirits out of the room. The ghosts (if indeed they were ghosts) were some of the more frightening I've seen, and the haunted house (if indeed it was a haunted house) was about as creepy and unsettling a place as I've seen in film (though I guess I said the same about the location of Unrest . . . but that was a hospital, so you ought to forgive me).
Tryanist and I talked about the film for quite a while after we saw it (despite his having had to get up in just a couple of hours to go to work), and we were able to make fairly cohesive sense of the storyline and its beginning and ending. I don't think, however, that had I been watching this by myself, I would've been able to figure these things out.
I feel that it was deliberately obscure, deliberately confusing, deliberately misleading, to unsettle or to simply keep the audience in the dark (so to speak) as to what was going on.
The heroine was really difficult to like. Part of it had to be the choice of actress, but even more so, I think she was written in the way that a foreigner imagines Americans sound (and Ugly Americans may actually sound that way, I dare not deny it): abrupt, sneering, and cursing quite literally every time they speak.
I wish I had liked the film more. It's not at all bad, just perplexing. And I really didn't appreciate the ending. I talked to tyranist about it, and how I would've done it the natural and easy Sequel Setup way (and I stand by that, sometimes a cliche is a cliche because it sodding WORKS), but I couldn't very well give the film an Unbelievably Crappy Ending Skull.
This was voted the Audience Favorite of the 2006 AfterDark Horrorfest, and was given its own (quite lackluster) theatrical release, and of the films in the series I've seen, I'd say that it was by far the scariest. But I still have to give the edge to The Gravedancers as the best of the lot. And I do wish I had seen these in the cinema. Even Dark Ride might have redeemed itself that way.
Hey, I said might.
Best Scare: When she first went into the house . . . my nuts didn't come back out for hours.
Posted: October 21, 2007

Total Skulls: 24

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?