New Release Review - Gone

Directed by: Heitor Dhalia

Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer Carpenter, Wes Bentley, Daniel Sunjata, Joel David Moore

Having been abducted herself a year previously, Seyfried takes the law into her own hands when her sister disappears. 

It seems like every bad Hollywood thriller has been set in the Pacific Northwest recently. They all share the exact same credit sequence, a helicopter shot following the protagonist as they drive through the landscape, the road flanked by thick woodland. This is but the first cliche delivered here. At one point we get the obligatory jump scare involving a cat in a closet. I can understand how a cat might get inside a closet but without the aid of opposable thumbs how on earth do they manage to close the door behind them? This is the sort of question you'll be asking yourself while watching this, as it sure beats concentrating on the film.

I'm not sure if Seyfried is really this bad an actress or if it's just the painful dialogue she has to vomit throughout. She constantly looks confused and I'm not sure if that's acting. Anyone who grew up in the eighties will remember the moment in "Commando" when a thug pleads with Arnie "You said you wouldn't kill me!" only to be dropped off a clifftop as the Austrian Olivier replies "I lied!" That scene is replayed verbatim with Seyfried in the Arnie role. Strangely it's not actually the worst moment in the film.

Of course it wouldn't be a modern thriller without desaturated cinematography, so extreme here that every actor looks like they were recently pronounced dead, and in some cases rigor mortis is setting in. Why you would shoot in such a colorful location only to remove all color from the final film is a puzzle to me. So many film-makers seem to think thrillers can't be colorful. They can. There once was an overweight English director who filled his thrillers with color no matter how dark the subject, but I wouldn't expect the hacks of today to be familiar with his work.

I suspect the movie's title may be prophetic for the career of it's director.

3/10

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