Showing posts with label doppelgangers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doppelgangers. Show all posts

Jan 24, 2015

SMILING

Back in school I had a good friend named Ryan, and well, he was my only friend. After school we always went to his house to hang out. His house sat almost in the middle of a big grazing field, which mostly worked in our advantage as it gave us a lot of room for playing outside. Since the house was in the middle of the field, you would have to follow a long driveway to get there. But that’s enough description so let’s cut down to the flesh of the story.

It was 8:00 in the evening and a huge fight broke out between my parents and me. I was frustrated and couldn’t stand it any longer so I called Ryan’s house, as I needed to break away from this mess. He picked up the phone and was surprised hearing from me at such a late hour (we were kids back then), but after hearing my story he said I could come over, although he said he was going to be away at football practice until 9:00, so I would have to wait for him.

I agreed.

A mistake.

It was night and it was dark. It didn’t mind the dark, but I never liked the road that led to his house. Its wavy pattern would sometimes make me sick, especially if I was traveling in a car. But now that was not the case, I was on my bike. The disturbing part of this story will not happen on this road, though. It will happen once I reached the house.

Parking my bike by the side of their empty garage, I walked up their front porch and reaching the door, rang the bell. The door opened almost as soon as my finger let go of the button, giving me a jump. There was no wait; it literally opened up almost instantaneously. Then I saw.

It was his mother. I always liked his mother; she was kind, sweet, and always offered her support whenever I felt down.

But I could tell something was wrong with her.

Her usually bright eyes seemed darker. Her hair was not neatly tied in a bun behind her head; it fell upon her shoulders. Before I had the chance to examine her further, something much more unsettling caught my eye. She was smiling.

She did not greet me, or start talking. Just kept smiling and stared right at me.

Feeling very uncomfortable, I asked if everything was all right. “Come inside and have some tea with me,” was her answer. Before I had the chance to answer she went back into the house. It was then that I noticed that she was wearing her bathroom robe. Having neither the disrespect to decline her offer, nor the guts to stay outside in the night, I entered the home and closed the door behind me.

Heading towards the kitchen I could hear her humming a strange tune. The moment I entered, she stopped humming and an overwhelming silence took over. Without waiting for a conversation to start, I took a seat at the kitchen table. She was standing in front of me, with her back turned in my direction. I tried not to look at her and started awkwardly looking around the room, until the tea was ready. I was thinking. Ryan’s mom would always seem warm and loving and eager to talk about anything concerning my school, family life, and anything else. Now she was just silent. Saying nothing. I spent the next five minutes in this deep thought.

And then it occurred to me.

She hadn’t moved at all during the whole time I was in the kitchen. With her back towards me, I could see that her hands were hanging down her shoulders. Her head was tilted to the left. Thinking something was wrong, I stood from the chair and approached her from behind. Making an awful lot of noise while doing so, she did not move a single bit. Carefully I approached her from the right side to look at her face to see if she was all right. The following sight still haunts me to this very day.

Her eyes were wide open and she was smiling.

Being as unsettled as I was, I decided it’d be best to go back home. “I think I better be off now, I have a lot of schoolwork for tomorrow,” I lied, and receiving no answer in return, I headed towards the front door and stepped outside onto the porch. I wasn’t scared, well maybe just a little bit, but mostly I was just weirded the fuck out.

As I was moved down the porch towards my bike, I caught a glimpse of two lights at the far end of the wavy road. It was a car. “Finally,” I thought. Ryan was around ten minutes late. However, as the car was nearing the house, I began wondering who was driving Ryan back from football practice. His dad was at a business trip, and wouldn’t be back for another two weeks. Ryan himself was too young to drive a car so who else? I was getting more and more anxious as the car was nearing the house. Who was driving Ryan back? The car pulled into the garage and stopped. Ryan was the first one to get out, giving me a “What’s up, man?”. But the person who came out of the car next was his mother. She noticed me and asked how everything was.


Source.

Jul 11, 2014

OLD MAN

I live alone with my dad, and he works long hours of the day, so I stay home by myself a lot. We’ve lived in this house for 12 years and nothing paranormal has occurred, at least that I know of, but recently some weird things have been happening to me while he’s gone or asleep. This morning around 4am, I decided to go to sleep and turned off my laptop.

My bed is next to a window facing a wall, but there’s currently nothing behind it because we’re rebuilding the headboard/desk that was back there. When I turned off my laptop, I thought I saw the frame of what appeared to be an elderly man standing behind me in the reflection from my lamp. I turned around but didn’t see anything, and chocked it up to sleep deprivation. I went to sleep, but had a strange dream where I killed a huge group of kids with what looked like two knives carved out of wood.

Today, I received a text from my dad a few minutes after I woke up saying that it was nice to see me up early for a change, and that he hoped I had a good day. I asked him what he meant by this; I had gotten up late in the afternoon. He said I had walked downstairs and had breakfast with him, and we had a conversation about not knowing when you’re going to die or where you’re going to go afterwards. This was kind’ve weird to me, both because I’ve read about doppelgangers on this site and because I’ve never walked in my sleep and have a good memory, but I ignored the feeling and told him to have a good day too.

A couple hours later, I was upstairs in the bathroom putting on some makeup when I saw something out’ve the corner of my eye in the mirror. My room was across the hallway, and when I looked in the doorway I saw what looked like a charred black arm. It was twisted and just sort’ve hung there. I screamed and ran downstairs, and immediately began talking to some friends about it online. After a few minutes of convincing, they got me to go back into the room to see if someone had broken in.

Once in the room, I searched it all over and found nothing. I sat in my bed and started messing with my phone, when I felt something sit down next to me. There was a big depression in the bed, and I felt something touch my leg. I felt nauseous suddenly and it felt hard to breathe, and once I was able to move again I bolted out’ve there. Not so sure I’m going to sleep in my room tonight, but I’m really curious about the dream and the possible(?) fire and if they relate at all to the old man.

Story source.

Jan 15, 2014

MY LAST NIGHT BABYSITTING

After much wavering and second guessing, I finally bit the bullet and returned to graduate school last fall. I'm sure several of you know how difficult it is to juggle a rigorous PhD program and a full-time job. I was going to need a small source of income, but wanted something that would allow school to be my first priority. As luck would have it, a good friend of mine knew a family in desperate need of a quality babysitter. Their current sitter had recently graduated high school, and was heading out of state for college. Initially, I felt a little odd accepting work as a babysitter - after all, I was in my mid twenties, a PhD student, and engaged to be married. But hell, the hours were flexible, the money was fantastic, and I could anticipate a great deal of solid study hours after the toddler was sleeping soundly.

To be quite honest, it was smooth sailing from the start. The family was overwhelmingly generous with their money, and their three-year-old daughter, Alison, was quite well behaved, even in all her mischievous, toddler glory. Over the next few months, I found myself up there several times a week, mostly relieving the mother, Renee, in the afternoons so she could run errands and catch a coffee break. I occasionally sat on Saturdays, so the parents could enjoy a date night to the movies. I wasn't especially fond of the weekend night shifts, especially because the family lived in a large home, high up in the mountains, surrounded by acres and acres of trees. During the day, their heavily wooded property was serene and majestic, but once darkness fell, it was eerie in its silence. I tried not to pay attention to the rustling of small, forest animals brushing past bushes, or the sharp snapping of tree branches as the wind went about its nightly weaving. Mostly, I just tinkered around on my laptop, or buried my nose in a textbook until I was relieved to go home.

Everything changed this past February. It was an especially cold Saturday evening, and I was due to babysit around 7 that night. Renee's husband Eric was out of town on business, and she was excited to share a night out with girlfriends. Armed with a backpack of heavy reading, I had my fiance, Marc, drop me off on his way to the gym. The night was mellow; heated up some frozen pizza, drew a bath with an embarrassing amount of bubbles and Elmo toys, and had the kid in bed by 8. I had an exam the following Tuesday, and admittedly had a lot of studying to conquer. My fiance arrived around 9:50, about 10 minutes before I was expecting Renee back home. Right at 10:00, and I mean on the nose, we heard footsteps on the wrap-around deck, and noticed Renee making her way to the front door. I remember finding it funny that I had been concentrating so hard, I hadn't even heard her suburban drive up.

Marc and I exchanged a knowing glance as Renee made her way into the living room where we sat. It appeared she might have had one glass of wine too many that evening, because she had this intoxicating, frozen grin on her face. At first, I chalked it up to booze, but when the grin remained, I started to feel uncomfortable, the way an unknown stranger staring from across a restaurant can make you feel. Renee was usually very chatty, perhaps even a bit ditzy, but tonight, her answers were short, but still polite enough. I began to gather my things, as my fiance continued a game of solitaire on his phone.

Renee sat at the oak dining table, that bizarre and unsettling grin still plastered to her face, and wrote me out a check. There was something painfully uncanny about her movements - they were rigid, forced, almost animatronic. By the time we got down to the drive-way, my fiance and I both had baffled looks on our faces. Renee stood in the window, smiling down on us, waving her hand back and forth. I gave a short nod and wave, keeping my eyes on the gravel. That discomfort wasn't letting go. We walked past Renee's silver suburban, taking note of how absolutely dusty it was. Especially strange for someone that seemed to take her car in for a wash at least once a week. I traced my finger across the passenger door absent mindedly, leaving a light coat of soot on the pad of my index finger. The car was filthy, like it had been through the elements.

"Where the hell did she go tonight? Through a sand storm?" I joked.

"Seriously..." Marc trailed off.

"I'm not the only person who found that whole thing weird, right?" I asked, attempting to keep my voice to a whisper.

"Oh, relax. She was probably just tipsy. Her smile, though...." he said, closing the driver's door.

We began our trek down the winding roads, towards, after a long night of babysitting out in the boonies, what I always liked to call,"sweet, sweet civilization".

The drive from their house to the freeway was dark, lined with redwoods and deer, which I usually quite enjoyed. Tonight, it seemed endless. I had this overwhelming, new desire to be on that highway, surrounded by other cars, amongst other drivers and passengers, heading into the city. We drove for what seemed like too long - something wasn't right. I reached for my phone and glanced at the time - we were usually passing the first gas station by now. I pawed at the handle of my purse, for the first time noticing the bag's weight. Ugh. I had totally forgotten my text book. Reluctant to turn around when we had already been driving for so long, I made amends with the fact that I absolutely needed that text if I had any chance at rocking my exam. Marc let out a groan as he swung the wheel, turning back the way we came. Climbing the hill to Renee's house, I saw that the suburban was no longer in the drive-way. She must had moved it into the garage for the night already. As we made our way to the deck, I saw the burgundy spine of my text on the couch through the sliding glass door. I continued on to the front door and knocked three times - no answer. I knocked again, and then tried the door handle - unlocked, as I usually left it while Renee and her husband were out. We made our way into the house, making sure to keep our footsteps quiet.

"Sorry, it's just me; I forgot my book," I said, trying to keep my voice down. My fiance was a few steps behind me, peeking around the corner.

"Her bedroom door is open, but the lights are off." Marc said, a confused look spreading across his face.

"Renee? I asked, a little louder this time, "Renee, it's me, you still awake?"

Silence.

We walked towards the kitchen, and I noticed the answering machine was blinking - I hadn't noticed it before I had left - there hadn't been any phone calls that night.

I'm not exactly sure what compelled me to push 'play' on that recorder, especially when, for all I knew, Renee and Alison were both asleep, and could be rudely awakened. My finger seemed to hover over that button for a mere second, before I pushed it in, rather aggressively. What I heard on that recording has never, ever left me. The time stamp of the message was 10:14 - we had left the house at 5 after 10.

"Hey sweetie, it's Renee. There is some kind of hold up on the highway here; maybe an accident or road work. I'll probably be about a half hour later than expected. I'm so sorry - help yourself to some dessert while you wait. Hope Alison didn't give you too much grief tonight." Her voice sounded cheery, normal...real.

I looked at Marc; my heart sunk, my eyes flooded with tears.

"A....Alison" I managed to sputter.

Marc disappeared up the staircase to Alison's room, taking steps three at a time. After a painfully long minute, he sauntered down the stairs, much slower than he has ascended them.

"She's fine. Sleeping soundly," Marc said, without emotion.

Marc and I found our way to the living room, where we sat without eye contact or conversation until Renee pulled up the drive way. She seemed exhausted, glad to be home and off the congested road. She chattered on about her evening, wrote me a check with a generous tip, thanked me for my patience, and smiled - the kind of smile that seemed absolutely genuine, and slowly faded when socially appropriate.

We stumbled down to our car in a daze, passing Renee's suburban, which still gleamed from a recent trip to the car wash.

I never had the heart to tell Renee what had happened that evening. I also never found the first check from the grinning woman. I ended up canceling my next two shifts, feigning sickness. I finally e-mailed Renee, telling her that my program was getting especially intense, and that I didn't think it best to continuing sitting for them. She bought the story, and now I'm free...free from the darkness that enveloped the home in the mountains, where I once met a woman who wouldn't stop smiling.


 Story source.

Jan 4, 2013

A SECOND EMILIE

The French teacher said that she was born in Dijon 32 years before she took up her post at Neuwelcke. She was fair skinned, with chestnut hair and blue eyes, and was fairly tall and slim. The pupils described her as having a sweet and lovable nature. The superintendents at her school were entirely satisfied with her work and were impressed by her gaiety, intelligence, and education.

Everything promised well for Emilie Sagee’s career at Neuwelcke - but within a few weeks of her arrival she became the focus of rumour and gossip at the school. It seemed that Emilie could be - literally - in two places at once. If she was reported to be in a particular part of the school, someone would contradict, saying, ‘Oh no, she can’t be there; I just passed her on the stairs' or in some distant corridor. Individual pupils repeated this sort of confusion time and time again, but the teachers dismissed the girls’ stories as silly mistakes.

But naturally the most excitement was caused by the rumours that followed the first appearance of the ‘double’ to a number of witnesses. Emilie Sagee was giving a lesson to Julie von Guldenstubbe and 12 other girls. The subject of the lesson varied slightly with each storyteller: for example, one suggested Emilie was energetically demonstrating a mathematical theorem on the blackboard; Julie said the lesson was French grammar. What was agreed on was that Emilie Sagee was standing with her back to the class. Suddenly, a second ‘Emilie’ materialized at Emilie Sagee’s side. The two were exactly alike and went through the same movements, synchronizing perfectly. The only difference was that the real Emilie had chalk in her hand but the fetch had none; it merely mimed the teachers actions as she wrote on the board. This story caused a great sensation at Neuwelcke, particularly as all 13 pupils in the class agreed precisely in their description of what they had seen.

In the following weeks the fetch was seen on a number of occasions. For instance it appeared at dinner, standing behind Emilie Sagee and imitating her movements as she ate. But, as in the classroom, the double’s hands were empty. On these occasions the schoolgirls were not alone in seeing Emilie’s fetch; the servants also reportedly saw the fetch behind the chair.

One of Julie’s school friends was badly frightened by the fetch. Fraulein Antonie von Wrangel was in a group invited to a local rural festivity and she was getting ready in her room. Emilie was helping her to fasten her dress. There was a mirror behind them and Antonie turned to catch a sight of two identical mademoiselles, each doing up her dress. Startled, she fainted clean away.

However, the fetch did not always mirror Emilie Sagee’s actions. Sometimes, Baroness Julie reported, it would behave quite independently. For example, the real Emilie Sagee would rise from her chair - but the double would remain seated. Antonie von Wrangel and a group of friends looked after Emilie when she was feverish with a cold. The girls took turns to read to her as she lay recovering in bed. Antonie was alone with her when she noticed the colour drain away from Emilie Sagee’s face. She was so pale she seemed about to faint, and Antonie asked if she was feeling worse.

Emilie replied with a weak and trembling voice that she was not, but her frightened look alarmed Antonie. A few moments later Antonie looked up to see the fetch walking about the room in excellent health. This time Antonie did not tell Emilie what she had seen, and when she came downstairs she immediately told the others what she had seen. On that time there was only one witness, but on the next occasion the incident was witnessed by the whole school.

This time all 42 pupils were gathered in the school hall to do their sewing and embroidery. Four french windows opened onto a corridor leading to the large garden in front of the house. The weather was fine and the girls had a clear view of the garden, where Emilie Sagee could be seen picking flowers.
The girls sat round a long table and the teacher sat at one end, supervising their work. After a little while she got up to leave them alone for some reason. Her chair did not remain empty for long however, as suddenly Emilie Sagee appeared in it. The girls turned their eyes to the garden and sure enough, there was Emilie. Although still gathering flowers, her movements were slow and languid as though - as the girls later remarked - she had suddenly been overcome with fatigue and tiredness. All the while her fetch sat silent and motionless. Although afraid, the girls were getting used to the strange phenomena and two of the boldest among them decided to take a closer look at the fetch. They approached the chair, determined to touch the apparition. Stretching out their hands they encountered a slight resistance in the air surrounding it, such as a film of muslin or crepe-de-chine might offer. One brave girl tried to pass between the chair and the table - and stepped right through the figure in the chair. Emilie’s double did not react, however, remaining seated until, a short time later, it slowly disappeared. As before the girls turned to the garden to watch Emilie Sagee again gathering flowers with her usual animation.
All 42 girls agreed on what they had witnessed and some questioned their teacher soon after. They asked how she had felt in the garden and if she had experienced anything special. Emilie answered that she had noticed the other teacher leaving the girls unattended. Emilie had had a clear view of the empty chair and recalled wishing the teacher had not left her pupils alone to waste their time and probably get up to mischief. She had wished, she added, that she could have been sitting there to keep an eye on the girls so they would get on with their work.

Dec 12, 2012

UNSUNG HORRORS: THE ABANDONED

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre. 

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time. 

Dir. Nacho Cerdà
2006
Spain / Bulgaria / UK
Lionsgate

The most obvious parable in the horror genre is one’s fear of their mortality. Though not all, most horror flicks off at least one character – sometimes dozens – and these victims fall at the hands of every kind of antagonist imaginable: masked madmen, ghosts, the insane, the resurrected, monstrous animals, supernatural and mythical figures, and even Death itself.  They die quietly, loudly, upsettingly, peacefully—but they die, alright, and into the ground they go. What you don’t see terribly often is what’s presented in The Abandoned, a little-known, little-celebrated supernatural creeper. Our two doomed characters, once trapped in a creepy house in the middle of the Russian wilderness, find themselves fleeing in terror…not from any of the aforementioned threats above, but from their fates, which wear their own faces, and whose bodies sport garish wounds and mutilations that dictate the manner in which they will die. For as our two characters attempt to hide from the bloody ends that await them, it’s not random ghosts or murderers that haunt them, but it’s themselves—walking dead twins with white eyes and destroyed humanity. And there’s no fighting or resisting them: to inflict any kind of trauma upon these unnatural beings is to inflict that same trauma upon the body that those walking nightmares represent. So how do you fight the very thing out to kill you when that thing is yourself?

Let’s back up a bit.

Marie (Anastasia Hille, Snow White and the Huntsman) has received word from the Russian government that after years of having its files and affairs in disarray as a result of the Cold War, the most recent campaign to become organized has unearthed evidence that property in the Russian wilds has been bequeathed to her by her natural parents. Marie, herself a film producer working in Hollywood, has no desire whatsoever to do anything with the property other than sell it and be done with it, as the hazy memories she does have of her childhood in Russia are not that great. And so she sets out to mother Russia and meets with a man named Misharin (Valentin Ganev, Undisputed II & III), who provides her with the necessary paperwork, as well as instructions on how to get to the very remote property.


Marie, following Misharin’s instructions, makes the trek out to the last property that could be considered part of civilization. The man who owns the property seems to be waiting for her, as it’s his responsibility to drive her out to her inheritance. On the way there, some creepy circumstances cause Marie to become separated from her driver, so she completes the remainder of the journey to the house on foot, in the dark, all by her lonesome.

Once there, and after a round of exploring her old homestead, she comes across a very unexpected guest: a man named Nicolai (Karel Roden, who has played the token Russian in numerous films, including Orphan, Wayne Kramer's Running Scared, and The Bourne Supremacy). Stumbling across another human being in the middle of her old, definitely abandoned childhood home is shocking enough—but he takes it one step further as he introduces himself…as her long-lost twin brother. He goes on to explain that he received a similar call from Misharin, hence his presence there. She remains suspicious until he brings her to one of the upstairs bedrooms and shows her two ancient cribs, which sport each of their names.

Marie barely has time to process this revelation when two more uninvited guests show up: while they appear to be exact copies of Marie and Nicolai, it soon becomes quite obvious that something really wrong is taking place in that house. The brother and sister flee after learning the hard way that these monstrous figures cannot be harmed without inflicting that same harm upon the person the thing represents. It is Nicolai who soon deduces what is going on: that they are being stalked by what are commonly called doppelgängers.

Doppelgängers? What the—

Let’s Wiki this bitch.
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune. In modern vernacular, it is simply any double or look-alike of a person. It also describes the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers often are perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and are regarded by some to be harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death.
And so the chase begins, and it’s much more than a case of a killer stalking its prey. It’s not just a random threat, but it’s Marie and Nicolai’s own fates. It is their reckoning, in a way—and to defy these identical creatures coming for them in the dark is to deny the “natural” order of the world. What can they do? Is there a way to escape the apparently inescapable? Will they go down fighting, or simply give in?


The Abandoned, first and foremost, is absolutely beautiful. For a film featuring tons of blood, grime, and muddy pig mutilation, that’s saying a lot. But director Nacho Cerdà has a masterful eye, and The Abandoned is not his first foray into beautiful horror. He first broke out on the scene years ago with three short films:  The Awakening, in which a boy begins to slowly realize that he's dead; Genesis, in which a sculptor mourning his dead wife creates a bust in her image...which begins to slowly come to life; and Aftermath, his absolutely unflinching look at the autopsy process...as well as what happens when a mortician likes to get a little too close to his specimens. Each segment is more horrific than the next, but each also contains an inherent beauty that you ordinarily would not find in such subject matter.

Every scene in The Abandoned is purposely constructed to trigger an emotional response, and it works like a charm. If Cerdà’s intention is to scare you, he’ll scare you; if he wants you to feel sadness, or longing, or desperation, you will. Above all, even more than scaring you, Cerdà wants you to feel uneasy. He doesn’t want there to be a single moment where you can settle comfortably back in your seat and fall into the film’s groove. Even in a rather uneventful scene in which Marie argues with her daughter over the phone, the harshness of their dialogue matched with seeming random close-ups of Marie’s belongings scattered throughout her hotel room have the power to set you at unease…even for a little.

The Abandoned's screenplay, by co-writers Cerdà, Karim Hussein, and the infamous Richard Stanley (a director himself, having made Dust Devil and Hardware), while not a typical slow burn (considering the very jarring sequence that opens the film), does certainly take its time. As usual, that leaves it open to cries of “it’s boring!” and “nothing happens!” by those who think a sequel to The Collector was a good idea. Those with patience will be rewarded, as the events become increasingly creepy until there is literally no way out.

Horror, in its nature, is very good at manipulating its audience into thinking it's interactive. No one shouts "don't trust him!" in the theater during romantic comedies; no one criticizes the hero during action films for running into the bulk of the danger instead of the fuck away from it. But when horror is involved, we become very invested, to the point we think the 2D image on the screen can hear us and consider our advice. And in such films, we like to mentally develop escape plans. We like to make it known what WE would do. "See, if this were me, I would be OUT of there!" Jada Pinkett says in the opening sequence of Scream 2. And for me, personally, I was so enamored by zombie cinema when I was young that I would always keep an eye out for houses I felt were perfect for withstanding a zombie outbreak: something with minimal windows, steel doors, more than one floor, and a fucking basement. But when it comes to The Abandoned, there is literally no escape plan. There is no tactic that Marie and Nicolai are failing to concoct. There isn't a single thing that can be done to salvage them. All we can do is wait for them to accept that there is no way out. And boy oh boy, some audiences do not like that one bit.

Hille as Marie and Roden as Nicolai are, for the most part, our sole characters on the screen. Nearly everything we see will be experienced through their eyes. Hille carries the first third of the film solo before meeting her brother, and so we journey with her, and see the things she sees, and we feel the desolateness and the angst that she feels. Performance wise, she stumbles at times, but never to the point where her role feels contrived or unnatural; likewise, Roden, as far as I'm concerned, put himself on the map with this film. Since seeing him as the haunted, terrified, but accepting Nicolai, I've noticed him each and every time he's popped up in something. He's not afraid to become immersed in a role and completely lose himself. In the aforementioned Running Scared, in which he plays a Russian henchman for the New Jersey mafia, he really cuts his teeth and lets loose for what may have been the first time in an American film. (In America's post-Cold War culture, it's not often that a character of Russian descent will be prominently featured in a film without the men playing a Bond villain or a mafia member, and the women either a prostitute or a total slut. If America's relationship with Russia had to be determined by only how they are portrayed in our films and television shows, one would think that we would happily shake hands with them and smile at the camera, but later, when no one is looking, douse ourselves with hand sanitizer and pray to God for protection. Our iterations of Russians are named Nicolai (hey, look at that!) or Natasha; they love to drink vodka; the women love to wear tight-fitting animal print dresses with pearls and fuck around on their husbands. And the men, well... apparently they're all insane. My god, Mitt Romney was right! Run!) 

Cerdà fills The Abandoned with heaps of well-executed scares. Sightings of the doppelgängers are at first filmed from far off, or made to feel like brief glimpses in our characters' peripherals, in keeping with the myth. But soon the beings grow closer until they're in our face, forcing us to recognize their own. Each sighting of these beings maintains a steady creep factor, even until we've reached the point where we, as viewers, should by now have grown used to their appearance and the shock value has worn off. But it doesn't wear off, not until the very last frame.


The biggest selling point of The Abandoned – and the biggest reason to seek it out – is the atmosphere that Cerdà establishes. Nearly all the critics agree – even those who would go on to slam the film itself – that Cerdà created a more than effective atmosphere filled with dread.

And speaking of, there has always been a measurable disconnect between critics and audiences. Audiences tend to think that critics lose themselves a bit too easily in “artsy-fartsy” stuff and are unwilling to recognize a more harmless and basic movie whose only intention is to entertain (and rightfully so), while critics tend to notice that there is a big difference in an audience genuinely liking/loving a film and said film actually executing expert construction in front of and behind the camera (and rightfully so); they recognize that film-making is an art, and is therefore open to deconstruction and discussion. As long as film critics remain a part of the medium (and with the boom of Internet journalism, it seems they are here to stay), this disconnect will always remain. Because of this, the widest chasm of this disconnect – that between critics and the horror genre – will also remain. It’s no secret there’s a common belief that most critics are unwilling to recognize a legitimately good horror film simply because of the company it keeps. As Bruce Campbell famously once said, horror sits on the second rung from the bottom of the film genre ladder, just above pornography. And he’s right. While there have been obvious horror films released over the years who broke the critical barricade and demanded they be recognized for the masterful works they were, they were also relabeled in an almost spiteful tactic, as if critics were unwilling to praise one of them there “horror” films: Roger Ebert, in his glowing review of Halloween, called it a thriller; Alien was, of course, referred to as science-fiction; Jaws a high-seas adventure; Psycho a psychological thriller; and The Silence of the Lambs a drama! A movie about a serial killer ripping flesh off fat women, all the while another cannibalistic serial killer tears men’s faces off! A drama, for fuck’s sake!


There’s a purpose to my rant, I swear: and here it is. In all these negative reviews – even the ones that praise Cerdà’s talent for creating dense atmosphere – they call the story itself inept, nonsensical, confusing, and purposely vague. Which, I’m sorry, makes me call bullshit, for two reasons: First, look me in the eye and tell me that Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining makes one goddamned lick of sense by the end, and when all is said and done. Does it make the film any less frightening, effective, or legendary? Fuck no, nerds. And two: why is it that films need to be tied up neatly by their conclusions for them to pass the critic’s test? Why aren’t films allowed to exercise a little bit of mystery and introduce a vague detail here and there in an effort to keep their audiences guessing? Why is it the audience is allowed to know every beat and every piece of reasoning introduced in the film, but meanwhile our characters are stumbling around in the dark trying to figure this all out? Is it not reasonable to suggest that the audience should be just as confused and unsatisfied as our characters, if the filmmaker’s intent was to unify them and make the audience feel what our characters were feeling?

Full disclosure: I have my own questions about the film. I can’t tell you 100% from beginning to end what exactly happens, and why. But that’s the beauty of it. The Abandoned wants you to accept its story at face value.  If you examine every nook, cranny, aspect, hidden meaning, trick, etc., of anything you love, it becomes less special. It’s unmasking the mascot that you’ve seen capering around at sporting events for years. It’s watching Robert Englund or Doug Bradley peel off Freddy Krueger’s or Pinhead’s make-up. The magic is gone. And who wants that?

At the core of The Abandoned is the nagging theme of the past, present, and future. Even if you can wade through all the clues and put together what you think transpired throughout the film, regardless if the director wanted it to be clear, or remain abstract, one thing remains: every film has a "point" or a "lesson" that it wants to bestow upon its audience. Or, if the filmmaker has at least half a brain, there should be. So what's the "theme" of The Abandoned? Perhaps it's that we shouldn't let our pasts define who we are in the present, nor should we ever let it have any of our time and space, as Johnny Cash used to say, in our futures. And a theme like that has a far reach. We all come from different backgrounds and different walks of life. For some of us, that journey has been a little tougher. And while it may have shaped the type of people we have become, we shouldn't ever let it get the best of us. Sometimes the past is exactly that – the past – and, like sleeping dogs, sometimes we should just let it lie.