*NO SPOILERS UNTIL VERY END - CLEARLY MARKED*
As a fan of Brittany Murphy it truly saddens me that Abandoned turned out to be her last film due to the fact that it is a complete mess filled with nonsense. This movie is very low budget and the acting is debatable at best but I am willing to overlook all of that if the plot is interesting and there is a good payoff in the end, something necessary in every basic mystery thriller with a twist. I don't hate Abandoned because it was cheaply made - not every film has the luxury of having a big budget or access to well known actors - I hate it simply because it's awful.
Mary (Murphy) and her boyfriend Kevin (Dean Cain) go to the hospital so he can have outpatient orthopedic surgery. The procedure is supposed to last an hour so after spending some time with him in his hospital room as he fills out paperwork, she leaves to wait until he is finished. After hours and no sign of her boyfriend, she starts asking around and shockingly there is no sign of him anywhere; he isn't in the system and no nurses have heard of him. The Dr. that was supposedly doing his surgery wasn't working that day and the nurse, Amanda, that Mary saw with Kevin that morning didn't exist.
What happened to her boyfriend? Does he even exist? Is Mary crazy and making the whole thing up? After a massive search for Kevin turns up nothing and some anti-depressant pills fall out of Mary's purse, people start to suspect that she's unstable which leads to Mary having to prove that she isn't delusional and that Kevin was with her that morning and really disappeared.
Of course there is your basic twist that explains what is really going on and honestly, it's nothing everyone hasn't seen before. It's a mystery/thriller by numbers and the action scenes at the end leave a LOT to be desired. It was a bad sign when I realized that I didn't care at all what happened to the boyfriend half way through. I found the film to be somewhat boring & I had no connection with any of the characters.
One thing I must comment on is Brittany Murphy's hair/makeup in Abandoned. It was distractingly awful and it has nothing to do with how sick she may or may not have been while shooting this film (I am pretty sure she didn't become ill until after) - it has to do with the colors and styling used. Her hair looked like someone put in brillo pad/horse hair like extensions and then crimped them a little and then greased it all down. It looked like her hair hadn't been washed in a month and was also oddly stiff as if it wouldn't move an inch even in a wind storm. The color was beyond atrocious - some weird cat pee orange/yellow color with dark roots and I don't know what happened to her eyebrows but they were odd as well in color. Were they bleached? Was powder brushed over them? I don't even know. The makeup shades were awful, especially the 80's style blush and lipstick. I read that her husband did her makeup but she must have approved it before shooting which is something I just don't understand.
3/10 - Bad acting (Brittany Murphy & Jay Picket are the exceptions), low budget look and awful awful plot and execution. My 2 biggest gripes below.
***************SPOILERS***********
There was a lot of stupid nonsense in this movie but the 2 worst were:
1) The main reason why I rated this film so low was the asinine plot point with the cop/book that was contingent on him saving the day in the end. The movie wants me to believe that it's plausible that he would take Mary's book, quickly flip through it and instantly flip right to the page that just so happens to map out the boyfriend's scheme which clued the cop in and sent him running back to the hospital to rescue Mary. Seriously? I have seen some ridiculous moments in movies but this was easily a Top 10. How many pages was that book? 200 something easy and he flips right to the exact one with the plot that magically was all written on one page for quick, easy reading, reads it and connects the dots. Pathetic.
2) A call goes out that 3 armed suspects in a grey sedan are entering the hospital over the police radio. Super cop shows up, rams a lady in a gray sedan, yanks her out of the car and throws her in the back of his cop car. Huh? No make or model was included in the report so how did Super cop know that the woman was apart of the money scheme? Grey sedans are very popular. She surely didn't have the 2 other suspects with her and wasn't seen carrying a weapon to the point where he would have seen it through the windows of the car. Of course the woman was Amanda and was one of the bad people but still, the way he just grabbed her was ridiculous.
As a fan of Brittany Murphy it truly saddens me that Abandoned turned out to be her last film due to the fact that it is a complete mess filled with nonsense. This movie is very low budget and the acting is debatable at best but I am willing to overlook all of that if the plot is interesting and there is a good payoff in the end, something necessary in every basic mystery thriller with a twist. I don't hate Abandoned because it was cheaply made - not every film has the luxury of having a big budget or access to well known actors - I hate it simply because it's awful.
Mary (Murphy) and her boyfriend Kevin (Dean Cain) go to the hospital so he can have outpatient orthopedic surgery. The procedure is supposed to last an hour so after spending some time with him in his hospital room as he fills out paperwork, she leaves to wait until he is finished. After hours and no sign of her boyfriend, she starts asking around and shockingly there is no sign of him anywhere; he isn't in the system and no nurses have heard of him. The Dr. that was supposedly doing his surgery wasn't working that day and the nurse, Amanda, that Mary saw with Kevin that morning didn't exist.
What happened to her boyfriend? Does he even exist? Is Mary crazy and making the whole thing up? After a massive search for Kevin turns up nothing and some anti-depressant pills fall out of Mary's purse, people start to suspect that she's unstable which leads to Mary having to prove that she isn't delusional and that Kevin was with her that morning and really disappeared.
Of course there is your basic twist that explains what is really going on and honestly, it's nothing everyone hasn't seen before. It's a mystery/thriller by numbers and the action scenes at the end leave a LOT to be desired. It was a bad sign when I realized that I didn't care at all what happened to the boyfriend half way through. I found the film to be somewhat boring & I had no connection with any of the characters.
One thing I must comment on is Brittany Murphy's hair/makeup in Abandoned. It was distractingly awful and it has nothing to do with how sick she may or may not have been while shooting this film (I am pretty sure she didn't become ill until after) - it has to do with the colors and styling used. Her hair looked like someone put in brillo pad/horse hair like extensions and then crimped them a little and then greased it all down. It looked like her hair hadn't been washed in a month and was also oddly stiff as if it wouldn't move an inch even in a wind storm. The color was beyond atrocious - some weird cat pee orange/yellow color with dark roots and I don't know what happened to her eyebrows but they were odd as well in color. Were they bleached? Was powder brushed over them? I don't even know. The makeup shades were awful, especially the 80's style blush and lipstick. I read that her husband did her makeup but she must have approved it before shooting which is something I just don't understand.
3/10 - Bad acting (Brittany Murphy & Jay Picket are the exceptions), low budget look and awful awful plot and execution. My 2 biggest gripes below.
***************SPOILERS***********
There was a lot of stupid nonsense in this movie but the 2 worst were:
1) The main reason why I rated this film so low was the asinine plot point with the cop/book that was contingent on him saving the day in the end. The movie wants me to believe that it's plausible that he would take Mary's book, quickly flip through it and instantly flip right to the page that just so happens to map out the boyfriend's scheme which clued the cop in and sent him running back to the hospital to rescue Mary. Seriously? I have seen some ridiculous moments in movies but this was easily a Top 10. How many pages was that book? 200 something easy and he flips right to the exact one with the plot that magically was all written on one page for quick, easy reading, reads it and connects the dots. Pathetic.
2) A call goes out that 3 armed suspects in a grey sedan are entering the hospital over the police radio. Super cop shows up, rams a lady in a gray sedan, yanks her out of the car and throws her in the back of his cop car. Huh? No make or model was included in the report so how did Super cop know that the woman was apart of the money scheme? Grey sedans are very popular. She surely didn't have the 2 other suspects with her and wasn't seen carrying a weapon to the point where he would have seen it through the windows of the car. Of course the woman was Amanda and was one of the bad people but still, the way he just grabbed her was ridiculous.