The Abandoned

Horror films can be a tasty treat when sweetened astutely and Nacho Cerda's The Abandoned is seductively saccharine. It’s about a demonic homecoming, a past whose stones were best left unturned, an impiate encounter with one's family roots. The heroine is an American movie producer who is suddenly and unexpectedly notified that she owns land in the Russian woods upon which stands her lost family's home. She travels there only to discover that it has a life of its own and is inhabited by her hitherto unknown twin brother. While they get to know each other, they are plagued by the presence of doppelgängers along with eerie visions of the event that irrevocably ruptured their parent's marriage. The grotesque imagery with which they duel is steadfastly maintained and Cerda ensures that his terror is neither kitschy nor compromised.

The Abandoned helped me to understand an important quality of the horror genre, the hows and the whys. While watching some films, why something happens or how something happens is often important, alluring, enticing. But a successful horror film reminds us that within such narratives these questions can intriguingly be left unanswered. I can't explain the contradiction that exists between the fact that the heroine's brother is alive throughout the film even though his infant corpse is discovered, nor how this house is able to cultivate its demonic presence, but that presence is so frightening and disconcerting that it competently forces you to feel its horrific reality, leading me to believe that an integral component of the successful horror film lies not in its rational coherency, but instead, in the intensity of its macabre ambience.