Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjuta, Sebastian Stan, Wes Bentley, Jennifer Carpenter
Distributor: Hopscotch Films
Runtime: 94 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2012
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If impersonating a real movie were a crime, the painfully inept thriller “Gone” (Summit) would be facing an open-and-shut case. Although morally acceptable for adult viewers, this tedious outing is cinematically recommendable to none.
Chief among the characters you won’t care about, acting on motivations you won’t believe to do things no sensible person would, is Portland, Ore., waitress Jill (Amanda Seyfried).
A year ago, it seems, poor Jill was abducted by a Ted Bundy wannabe and kept in a hole in the ground (“It places the lotion in the basket…”) out in the woods. Although she escaped, no evidence of the crime could be discovered; so the police down at the local precinct think she’s crazy.
That’s inconvenient once Jill arrives home from the graveyard shift one morning to discover that her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham), with whom she has been living, has disappeared. Fearing that the killer who once captured her has now returned to kidnap Molly, resolute Jill sets off in search of Sis. And drags us along for the ride.
Those not overcome by ennui will glimpse Jill in outline behind a shower curtain, discover that a minor character has a man in his bed, and hear the kind of words Dad might have given vent to after hitting his thumb with a hammer.
Jill’s do-it-yourself pursuit of justice aside, there’s nothing really wrong with director Heitor Dhalia’s flimsy flick. But there’s absolutely nothing right about it either.
The film contains vigilantism, brief, shadowy partial nudity, an incidental gay situation, a few uses of profanity, at least one instance of the F-word and some crude and crass language.
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