The Abandon review.
A Cube-like adventure that doesn’t need its equation to fully add up to prove entertaining.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Abandon
Directed by Jason Satterlund
Written by Dwain Worrell
Starring Jonathan Rosenthal
The Abandon Review
Single location stories can be tricky. Single location stories with one character on screen, doubly so. The Abandon pulls it off surprisingly well. In fact, I’d argue that the minimalist take on this sci-fi adventure into the unexplained is the highlight of the entire production. The isolation works to its advantage at every turn. Not knowing what’s going on outside of the space is a benefit. Occasional hints at it are more mind-bending as illusions than they would be as fleshed out scenes. Trapping us inside of an unknowable situation gives The Abandon the connection that it needs.
Miles Willis (Jonathan Rosenthal), a soldier wounded in battle, awakens in a strange room. There is no exit. The word “Abandon” is written on one of the walls. Before long, it is inexplicably joined by the words “All” and “Hope”. His only hope is a satellite phone ringing inside of the room. Unfortunately, it’s somehow sitting on the ceiling. A problem that suddenly appears solvable when the gravity inside of the room starts to change.
If you’ve heard anything about The Abandon…you’ve likely seen it compared to Cube. It’s true that it takes place in a closed off cube like room where strange things happen…and that math rears its ugly head once again. But this isn’t a movie about a group of strangers working their way through a bunch of traps. Miles is very much alone in his room. The woman on the other end of that phone, Damsey (Tamara Perry), is in a similar situation. She’s in her own room…one that we, and Miles, can’t see or get to.
Damsey’s voice is the second character in The Abandon. She is all that Miles has to tether him to reality. A reality that he doesn’t fully understand. Signs that things are a bit more complicated than abductees in strange rooms appear quickly when the two get to talking. Miles is in Iraq. Damsey claims to be in Massachusetts. Miles notes that it would be impossible for his phone to pick her up from that distance. Imagine what he thinks when Damsey laughs off his insistence that he’s in the year 1991.
The Abandon does a good job setting up the strangeness of Miles’ predicament. The rules of his prison are difficult to pin down. At one moment the temperature gets boiling hot. The next gravity shifts, and he is sitting on what was the ceiling. Strange messages appear and are crossed out just as quickly. Occasionally, a man’s voice breaks onto the line telling Miles that they all have to die. Oh…and if that wasn’t enough, the walls appear to be closing in. There is no shortage of ideas that keep The Abandon interesting throughout.
At its core…The Abandon succeeds because of Rosenthal. He gives a terrific performance. He’s alone…and his character can’t understand anything that’s going on around him (or outside of his room). To call the role challenging would do it a disservice. Rosenthal nails the immediacy of the situation and the hopelessness that accompanies many realizations. He finds a level of unexpected emotional depth in Miles. One that you wouldn’t expect when the movie begins to reveal its secrets.
Mysteries and performance give The Abandon a lot to build on. That build is consistently engaging. Things ramp up into some appropriately dire straights for Miles. We get plenty of answers…enough to satisfy. Still, The Abandon builds such an interesting premise that fully sticking the landing proves difficult. There’s nothing wrong with the ending…it leaves us with some new questions while providing a conclusion to the story we have been watching. It just can’t possibly pay off the scope of the story that we’ve been preparing for outside of the walls we can’t see past. Whereas the single room location works to The Abandon’s advantage…the brief times we leave it work against it.
It’s a small gripe in an otherwise wholly entertaining film. Placing a large-scale story outside of Miles’ reach…and asking him to work it out while isolated from everyone (except for Damsey) …creates a unique experience. The mysteries are interesting. Rosenthal is terrific. You don’t even have to understand the third act math to follow what’s going on. That’s too many wins to ignore.
Scare Value
Not everything in The Abandon works. A surprising amount of it does, however. Jonathan Rosenthal puts on a (mostly) one man show…locked in a strange room where the laws of science need not apply. It’s an intriguing story that keeps you engaged throughout. It doesn’t quite stick the landing…but it’s a room worth spending some time in.
3.5/5
The Abandon Link
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