by Larry Richman
September 25, 2006 12:18 PM

I attended the world premiere of "The Abandoned" at the Toronto International Film Festival. This was part of the "Midnight Madness" series which is held at the Ryerson Auditorium, the largest venue of the festival, with 1200 seats. Not only does it boast a colossal screen, but it also has a 16-speaker sound system that surrounds the hall and leaves goosebumps in its wake. How appropriate is it, then, that films in which the music and sound effects play almost as large a role as the characters themselves are seen here at midnight -- horror films. First, a disclaimer: I have a weakness for scary movies. In fact, a favorite genre of mine may be the psychological thriller with a touch of fright thrown in. "Jacob's Ladder," "Donnie Darko," and "The Butterfly Effect," for example, all fit the above description and include a time shift element to them. "The Abandoned" is all that and more. Director Nacho Cerdà has crafted a ghost story that manipulates space and time.

An American woman receives a mysterious message. She is summoned to the office of a lawyer who informs her that she has inherited the family property in Russia. She accepts, if only in an effort to find out what happened to her as a child, when she was separated from her parents about whom she knows very little. She is searching for answers to age-old questions -- Who am I? Where did I come from? How did I get here? We accompany her on this journey, and it takes us to a place that is as terrifying as any I've seen onscreen.

Much of the story is told through the clever use of light and sound, as are most good horror films. The settings are dark and claustrophobic with an appropriately foreboding score. Most of all, the visual and sound effects tell the story almost as much as the dialog. With a tip of the hat to "Duel," "Jaws," and "Jeepers Creepers," the suspense and tension in the hall was made absolutely terrifying by the mind-boggling level of sound here, and I hope that future audiences will have a similar experience.

Make no mistake about it -- this is a great story. It would elicit screams around the campfire simply told from the written page. And what a long, strange trip it was for the filmmakers. As was pointed out in the Q&A after the screening, this film took 8 long years to go from the page to the screen. Some of the sequences are just so frightening and unpredictable that I found myself with open mouth for much of the film -- can you say jaw-dropping? I saw a number of horror films at this year's festival, but none as original as this. I even hesitate to call it a horror film. Most scary movies end with some type of resolution -- the monster dies, the villain is vanquished, evil is defeated. With "The Abandoned," we walk out of the theater stupefied, trying to put all the pieces together, marvelling at Cerdà's achievement.