Abandoned Souls

Firstly, the synopsis for this film is inaccurate. As far as I can tell, and to be honest, my attention began to wander almost instantly, a bunch of psychos escaped from some sort of prison guarded by guys in respirators and covered in sores. Some other dudes are sent out to find them. Meanwhile, several couples head to a vacation on an isolated island where they are targeted by one of the psychos. The acting is pretty good, but the film has all the flaws of low budget horror. Set "North of Chicago" but definitely more North of Toronto. I'm tired of Canadian filmmakers pretending that they are filming in the USA. Anyway, not bad enough to be fun, but really really boring. I assume the high rating is due to the cast and crew voting. All 7 of them. One of my old makeup teachers, Justin Gateman, was key makeup on this but for some reason has not made it on to the IMDb credits. Maybe he removed himself? The makeup is quite good, but couldn't compensate for the boring nature of the film.

I accidentally watched this little flick. It deserves a little higher rating, so I gave 6 stars. Though there is little to nothing revealed about the background of the escaped prisoners (psychopaths ? Hannibal Lecters even ?), it is pretty foreseeable what happens.

I'll make it short for once, pros are: Good camera, proper score, decent directing, reasonable cut, OK acting, has atmosphere. No Zombies (quite often in debuts). Cons are: Predictable, weak book, weak plot, weak dialogs, no character development, some hasty scene management (I saw parts of equipment in one scene), too long and too often women screaming or crying in desperate fear (I found that especially annoying).

After about 15 minutes you know how the movie will continue. It manages (with some quality) you to keep at it, but in the end you are left disappointed. That often occurs with movies where the author is the director too. It's a matter of being blind in one eye about the flaws in your writing, even if you are a good director - it seems that Mr. Abell is one.

Neveretheless the movie is not 4-stars bad. It definitely has some substance, mostly by saying some things not, or saying them allusively, which is quite common in the Indy scene. For that, in turn, it's a simple standard pattern we've seen a fifty times.

We have the dual ingredients of bad acting and wtf is happening plot to stir together to make this turd soup of a movie. Black guy is FLAAAAT. Like,"just say the words,no inflection at all" flat. Continuity is crap (55:10-1:00,just trust me.....)and what was even going on? The literal chronology makes no sense. Hermit has been a childhood tale to one character,but is a recent prison escapee. Other character has a secret, but we never quite find out the full details of the past, as in why that person ended up where they did. All the characters were annoying,was hoping everyone died. Just awful. It's too late for me,I can't unsee this. But you have a chance. Save yourself.

This movie started out interestingly enough with a prison-break taking place in a location where the guards wore gas masks and had nasty sores and blisters on their faces. Then forward the time a year in the story and this is where the movie toppled over and was unable to recover.

"Abandoned Souls" turned out to be a movie with an uninteresting storyline and equally uninteresting characters. And you will mostly likely just end up giving up on the movie, as I did. I managed just about halfway through this snoozefest before my soul abandoned me and I had to put on another movie.

I am sure that the story seemed alright in theory and on paper, but once brought to the screen it just wasn't worth the paper the script was written on.

I would advice you to stay well clear of this movie as it has nothing of any interest to offer, aside from a mind-numbingly dull way to pass time. It just wasn't worth the time, money or effort.

That cover art here on IMDb might be able to fool you, the actors and the story will not be so successful though. The movie lacks quite a few things and while there have been worse cases of "acting", the people on display here have nothing useful to add. Not that the script would give them a helping hand (something some characters in horror movies either do reluctantly or too much of).

Whatever the case and the time frame this plays in, it will be one thing for sure: Waste of your time. Yes there are some pretty faces amongst the cast, but let them prove to you if they actually can act in another movie (if they get that chance/you finding that movie). Horror can be easily produced which means, there are a lot better movies out there ...