Movie Review: ‘Gone’ Hasn’t Left My Thoughts

Posted By: Brandonon: May 11, 2012In: Movie ReviewsNo Comments

Serial killers never cease to fascinate and scare the public. Movies based on real ones are almost always worth the watch. Perhaps there is a severe shortage of real serial killers to create movies about, or maybe it’s just that any writer feels as though they can create one that is equally as entertaining as the real thing. Unfortunately a vast majority of the time the writer falls short when trying to do this. When a writer falls short creating such a crucial aspect of the movie it’s likely that the movie itself is going to be awful as well. The serial killer in Gone definitely did not live up to expectations at all, even my lowered ones for completely fictional ones thanks to Chris Sparling. Having said that, you’d expect Gone as a whole to be terrible due to its weak serial killer character; however, I am glad to say it is not. As a whole, the movie was worth watching and didn’t make me want to write a pseudo-rant-review on it. I’m looking at you ATM; it’s too bad you’re not like the characters in the movie and my staring doesn’t make you destroy yourself.

Gone revolves around Jill (Amanda Seyfried) as she searches for her sister, Molly (Emily Wickersham) after she was abducted. Jill had been abducted by someone she claimed to be a serial killer in her sleep years ago, but managed to escape. She was admitted against her will to a mental institution for a short period of time because of the incident. The police searched for the hole in the woods Jill described but when they were unable to find it, felt she had fabricated the whole story. It’s for this reason when her sister is abducted in the same was she was, the police don’t believe her and she has to take matters into her own hands since she believes that the killer will murder her sister shortly after sunset.

There are a few twists and turns along that way that definitely keep you interested. The movie is billed as a Drama/ Thriller but it’s definitely more of an action adventure in my opinion. The best comparison I can think of is a movie like The Fugitive. Granted I don’t think this movie is as good but it definitely has that same action/adventure feel to it.

As you can see Gone definitely had the potential to be a great movie but it disappointed in the acting department for the police and, as mentioned before, the serial killer. Specifically Katherine Moenning as Erica Lonsdale, Wes Bentley as Peter Hood, Michael Paré as Lt. Ray Bozeman, and Sam Upton as Officer McKay. They were all part of the police department and I felt their performances were more fitted for a soap opera than a movie. I’m not sure that Wes Bentley’s facial expression changed once. I’m not saying acting is easy, but by the end of the movie when the police were on screen I’d cringe on the inside hoping they wouldn’t be there too long.

The second aspect that definitely disappointed me the most was the serial killer himself. I say that the same way a parent says it to a child when they’ve let them down for something. This is a definite difference than me being angry at the overall stupidity of the serial killer character that existed in ATM. Yes, I still haven’t gotten over it yet. Anyway, in Gone the serial killer was disappointing in his lack of execution, no pun intended. I’m not going to give away any spoilers, so all I’ll say is that for a serial killer that’s been killing for as long and as many girls as he has it implies that he knows what he’s doing. Therefore, it didn’t make sense to me that it seemed like he was popping his killing cherry and was extremely under prepared…and a bitch (believe me watch it, remember this I guarantee you’ll know when to silently nod your head in agreement). Thus, you have my disappointment.

If you’ve enjoyed other serial killer movies then you would definitely like this one. The overall acting besides the police was solid and so was the story line. Compared to other movies that are out right now I definitely think that this is a better alternative than many of them. Take my word for it, because IMDB doesn’t know what the fuck it’s talking about.