Going home can always be a bit weird. You run into businesses from when you were a kid. You bump into people from your old days in the neighborhood. But you notice all the ways things have changed since your last visit. Building have been smashed. Homes turned into block long apartment complexes. There are quite a few people who have passed away or moved. You haven’t been around for all the change. You’re basically a tourist acting like you belong. Your connection is purely memories of a bygone day. The Abandoned is about someone who returns home to a place that she can’t remember.
Maria Jones (Snow White and the Huntsman‘s Anastasia Hille) has been living in America for nearly 40 years when she gets a call from an overseas government official with information about her past. Turns out she was born in Russia and adopted by an American family. She flies to the old country to learn that her birth mother died at the time of Marie’s birth. She does get the address where her parents lived and arrange a driver for the long journey. It’s a remote farmhouse that doesn’t look like it’s been touched since she left. As she pokes around, Marie discovers two things. First is that she is a twin. Her brother Nicolai (Orphan‘s Karel Roden) had also recently learned that he was not an only child when he was adopted. He did not expect to meet her so soon. The more disturbing part is that Nicolai and Marie appear to have doppelgängers. The twins are stuck in the house as the zombie-esque versions of themselves track them down in the decaying farmhouse. Are the twins going to survive their reunion?
The film originally came out in 2006 and still feels fresh and frightful. During the bonus features, the screenwriter admits he wanted to give The Abandoned the feeling of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The film has a sense of the Soviet masterpiece with its own decaying Russian landscape (although The Abandoned was made in Bulgaria). Director Nacho Cerdà achieves the atmosphere of an Eastern Bloc nightmare in both the harshness of the political system or the constantly self-destructing farmhouse. The Abandoned sucks you in with the Doppelgänger attack. We also get the mystery of the twins and exactly caused their mother to die and have them split up. The mystery and scares last for the whole film. The Abandoned reminds us that sometimes you don’t need to go home.
The Video is 2.35:1 anamorphic. The transfer brings out the green and dark nature of the countryside. The Audio is DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround Sound or LPCM 2.0 Stereo. The subtitles are in English and Spanish.
Zoë Rose Smith Interviews Nacho Cerdà (49:58) is a pretty deep interview with the director who is in a film vault. He talks about growing up and seeing a lot of the Italian horror movies on VHS. He was taken to see Jaws when he was just 6. He also saw Dino’s King Kong, Earthquake and Airport movies as a kid. He points out it was a lot of death on the big screen. In the pre-VHS era, his family rented Super 8 version of films. He gets into rewriting the script to fit the budget and the Bulgaria shoot.
Zoë Rose Smith Interviews Richard Stanley (44:56) about his time rewriting the script right before production. At the time, Stanley lived in Spain so he could make a trip across the mountains to work with Nacho Cerdà in Barcelona. He never read the original script and just worked off the latest draft. He does point out that the project was supposed to be about Canada and not Russia. He gets into how the had to get rid of major underwater scenes because of the budget. He ended up going to Bulgaria to help put out fires on the set – including one actor who had to go.
Zoë Rose Smith Interviews Karim Hussain (51:32) about the script. He had originally written the script for himself to direct. He used a bit of Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker) as an influence. He met Nacho Cerdà when he was programming at Fantasia Film Festival. Hussain has stopped directing and screenwriting for the moment.
The Making of The Abandoned (13:00) has them shooting with 35mm film cameras in Bulgaria. Anastasia Hille talks of her character’s plight. There’s a bit about the separated twins. This was shot on location.
In the Den of The Abandoned (30:00) is a making of special done for the French market (there’s burned in French subtitles). There’s more footage from the location in Bulgaria.
Nacho Cerda: The Trial of Death (27:46) gets into his relationship with cinema and horror movies. He was really influenced by nightmarish films from all over the globe.
The Little Secrets of Nacho Cerda (13:49) has him explain how they had to remove the digital effects that made things look like they were shooting on Mars. We get to see how the special effect worked when a character fell through the wooden floor. He talks about little things they did to save money on post-production effects.
When Buck Meets Cerda: A Dialogue Between Friends (14:11) has Douglas Buck, the director of the Sisters remake sitting down with Cerda. They get into what attracts them to making horror films. They get into the presentation of violence in a film.
Alternative Cuts (12:06) are different takes used in scenes.
Alternate Endings (11:00) includes a more ghostly ending.
Deleted & Extended Scenes (6:00) includes more of the creepy Notary scene.
Outtakes (10:27) includes lots of slates and blooper in Bulgaria.
Photo Gallery (9:33) has press photos, behind the scenes shots, posters and promotional art.
Trailers includes the Theatrical Trailer (2:26) in English, Spanish and German and the French Trailer (1:56) in French and English.
Storyboard Collection (11:02) lets you see the film as it was drawn out in preproduction. You can print out the storyboards using the disc in a computer’s BD-ROM drive.
Unearthed Films present The Abandoned. Directed by Nacho Cerdá. by Karim Hussain, Nacho Cerdá & Richard Stanley. Starring Anastasia Hille, Karel Roden, Valentin Goshev, Valentin Ganev, Paraskeva Djukelova, Carlos Reig-Plaza, Kalin Arsov & Svetlana Smoleva. Running Time: 99 minutes. Rating: Rated R. Release Date: April 9, 2024.
