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Gone poster

CAST
AMANDA SEYFRIED
WES BENTLEY
JENNIFER CARPENTER
ERIN CARUFEL
KATHERINE MOENNIG
JOEL DAVID MOORE
SOCRATIS OTTO
MICHAEL PARE
TED ROONEY
NICK SEARCY
SEBASTIAN STAN
DANIEL SUNJATA
SAM UPTON

WRITTEN BY
ALLISON BURNETT

PRODUCED BY
DAN ABRAMS
SIDNEY KIMMEL
GARY LUCCHESI
TOM ROSENBERG
CHRIS SALVATERRA

DIRECTED BY
HEITOR DHALIA

GENRE
CRIME
MYSTERY
THRILLER

RATED
AUS: M
UK: NA
USA: PG-13

RUNNING TIME
95 MIN

 

GONE (2012)

Gone is a mystery/thriller that is neither mysterious nor thrilling and proves Amanda Seyfried is quite a ways off at becoming a leading lady of quality entertainment.

Here is a film with an interesting idea that goes nowhere. Fast. Seyfried stars as Jill, a survivor of an abduction who a year (and many prescribed pills) later returns home from a night shift to find her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) has been abducted by the same man, out for revenge on the one that got away.

At least that’s what Jill thinks. You see, the police don’t buy Jill’s story of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a deep, dark hole somewhere is Portland’s vast Forrest Park, and her latest claims don’t have the fuzz scurrying to find Molly either.

So Jill takes it upon herself to find her sister and her abductee, as we are left to wonder: Is Jill right? Is she insane? Do we care either way?

Gone is directed by Brazilian filmmaker Heitor Dhalia, and like most international directors who have made there Hollywood debuts, Gone proves to be a throwaway movie which Dhalia does not have the tools to turn into something worth fretting over, with its initially intriguing mystery losing steam very quickly as Seyfried plods along from one clue to the next as 95 minutes feels like 3 hours.

Screenwriter Allison Burnett (a scribe of shaky track record) fails to inject any depth in his characters or momentum in its investigative mystery. Dhalia tries to make up for it by evoking the scripture of David Fincher and turn Gone into a dark, gloomy thriller which banks on mood to make up for hokum writing.

Yet while Dhalia was aiming for the “follow the clues” darkness of Fincher’s Se7en, he instead gets the convoluted “thrills” of the Al Pacino stinker 88 Minutes. Perhaps cinemas can run the two in a bad thriller double feature.

Fronting the camera for the majority of the time is Seyfried, who just can’t catch a break script wise since breaking through in the musical Mama Mia! For the material on offer Seyfried does a solid job, yet she doesn’t have that particular kind of talent to rise above the writing. Bad dialogue delivered by a good actor is still bad dialogue, and Gone has more than its share.

**
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