42
Metascore
8 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75TV Guide MagazineKen FoxTV Guide MagazineKen FoxBy the film's downbeat climax, Cerda's dread of death and uncertainty about digging too deeply into what's better left buried have become palpable, and The Abandoned lingers beneath the skin as any decent horror movie should.
- 75The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe Abandoned is a rare horror film that moves from the real world into a kind of psychic space, and slowly suffocates its characters inside their own heads.
- 70VarietyDennis HarveyVarietyDennis HarveyMinimally plotted but beautifully atmospheric nightmare.
- 40The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottAfter a while, Mr. Cerdà exhausts his repertory of spooky effects -- too many dark hallways and illogical, foreboding point-of-view shots -- and you begin to hunger for exposition, always a bad sign in a horror film. Even worse is that, by the time the explanations arrive, you no longer care.
- 30L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyCerda's striking creep-show atmospherics, desaturated palette and off-kilter editing rhythms are a style in search of a movie: The muddled "Twilight Zone" payoff here is hardly enough to justify a sluggish two-character round-robin of "Don't look in the basement!" The last thing a filmmaker named Nacho needs is more cheese.
- 30Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovIt's no "Dellamorte Dellamore," but neither is it "Uwe Boll," a smallish favor we should all be thankful for.
- 25Boston GlobeBoston GlobeWith a "Lost"-meets-"The Haunting" plot and a handful of convoluted thematic twists involving family, history, murder, and death, The Abandoned limps into a nebulous kind of horror netherworld, peppered with painfully long tension-building sequences and unimaginative dialogue.
- 16Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanThe gimmick in The Abandoned is that people battle their zombie doubles, whom they can't kill, since they'd be killing themselves. But the movie sinks so deep into deathly atmosphere that there's no life to it.