Abducted (2013) Directed by Lucy Phillips & Glen Scantlebury

This movie is a pretty bad one for the simple reason that it never works out as an effective one.

It's a real lackluster movie, that so easily could have been something tense and mysterious, considering its main premise. Yet, the movie totally fails at ever setting up any good tension or mysterious with anything. As a matter of fact, it handles all of its tension horribly, to be frank. There is never a good build up to anything, which causes its setup and all of its developments to fall flat as well.

It's hard to ever care about anything that's happening in this movie. Maybe if only the movie explained a few things better or expanded on some things, this movie at least would have been a more interesting and potentially also more surprising to watch. The movie is still filled with surprises and twists in it but instead that all of these surprises make you go 'ohhh, that's clever' or 'I didn't see that coming!', it makes you go 'yeah, so what?! Why should I care?'.

There is never a real sense of fear or danger throughout this movie, even though its main characters are basically in constant danger, considering the situation they are in. But they all act surprisingly calm and 'normal', so if they don't feel any fear, then why should we as viewers do?

There is also never a decent enough payoff to anything. It feels as if the movie is constantly building up toward a grand finale and reveal, that however just never comes. Sure, there are plenty of reveals throughout this movie but never anything big or truly surprising and original. Or at least nothing that works out that way...

There also isn't ever enough variety in this movie, which is a reason why it bores and drags as well at times. It's one of those movies that's mostly set at just one location, which in this case really doesn't work out too well.

I think it's trying to be original by instead of being more horror like with its premise and settings, it's being more of a science-fiction movie. And that's all fine, as long as it's doing anything interesting and engaging with its approach, which however just never ever really is the case for this movie.

Simply not worth watching.

4/10

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