Gone

Thrillers can be an interesting and intriguing genre if it's done in an original, creative way, however with "Gone", this was certainly not the case. The start of it really caught your eye, but as it unfolded, every turn it took, kept getting more predictable as it went along.

When her sister, Molly (Emily Wickersham) disappears, Jill (Amanda Seyfried) is convinced the serial killer who kidnapped her two years ago has returned to finish her off. So she sets out to once again confront her abductor. First, she calls the local police, Powers (Daniel Sunjata), Erica Lonsdale (Katherine Moennig), and new guy, Peter Hood (Wes Bentley) and gets no where, because they feel she is hallucinating, because she ended up in a mental facility due to her past abduction, so she must be just having a paranoid episode. After speaking to Molly's boyfriend, Billy (Sebastian Stan) about her whereabouts and coming up empty, she decides she has no other recourse but investigate where Molly is on her own. Will she find her or be killed in the process?

Others to round out the cast are Jennifer Carpenter as Sharon Ames, Jill's friend at work, Michael Pare as Lt. Ray Bozeman, Socratis Otto as Jim, Nick Searcy as Mr.Miller, Sam Upton as Officer McKay, Joel David Moore as Nick Massey, and Ted Rooney as Henry Massey.

This was directed by Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia ("Nina" '04, "Drained" '06, "Adrift" '09), and it had some interesting pacing going on. It was written by Allison Burnett ("Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight" '92, "Bleeding Hearts" '94, "Red Meat" '97, "Autumn in New York" 2000, "Resurrecting the Champ" '07, "Feast of Love" '07, "Untraceable" '08, "Fame"'09, "Underworld: Awakening"'12). I'm giving her resume mostly because even though she is a seasoned writer, this was a rather predictable script. I must say, a number of the films in her resume weren't what I would've called great films due, a lot, to the writing. So I'm not sure if Burnett was just having a bad day for writing or what was going on. There were too many things in this film that were not credible like, why would she meet the would-be killer in a dark secluded park instead of a public place? Or, why wouldn't the police believe her? After all, they knew there was an abductor that got away two years prior. But, I guess that would kill the movie.

Anyway, this wasn't a total wash. Seyfried's intense performance was worthy of the viewing, as were some of the supporting cast. This had an interesting premise, it's just too bad it got so bogged down with a script that matched the title: Gone!

Out of 4 stars: 2                           Rated: PG-13                           95min.