The Abandoned (2015)★★★☆☆

Overall this movie wasn’t bad. Jason Patric was fine as Cooper, though he mostly sat around and grunted. Louisa Krause was also fine as Streak. There were some really creepy scenes throughout the movie, and the setting in general was awesome (giant old abandoned apartment complex? I’ll take it!).

But something about the twist at the end didn’t quite land for me. It was an interesting twist, but there wasn’t enough backstory or foreshadowing for it to make much sense. I felt more confused than scared at the end of the movie.

And something about the climactic scenes wasn’t working for me either. I’m not sure whether it was the background music, the effects, the dialogue, or what, but none of the really intense scenes were believable.

The pacing was interesting. Things happened regularly, but it was a lot of build up only to completely change direction at the end. There were a lot of quiet scenes of just walking in the dark, but they never felt slow and the movie never dragged.

I’d say this one was more thriller than horror, with a lot of jump scares and a somewhat frustrating mystery. It was reasonably entertaining and consistently spooky and might be worth 90 minutes of your time if you’re snowed in at home.