The Abandon

American soldier Miles Willis (Jonathan Rosenthal) is fighting in the Middle East. He is shot. A bright light shines down and he finds himself in a cube room with no exit.

This is drawing heavily from Cube, but it doesn't have the fun of a good mystery. It feels known and random. The variable gravity is interesting for awhile, but Miles annoyed me for not wearing his helmet. It's the first thing that I would do. I would also try to grab all the stuff before they come flying at my head. This doesn't have the mystery solving fun and the final reveal falls a bit flat. It's no sin to copy Cube, but this doesn't do much with it.

The concept is definetly interesting, and the main actor is incredible with it's expressions. The writting is enough to keep someone entertained, but not to satisfy.

On top of this, the set is always the same. After a bit of the movie, you realize it really is everything the movie has to offer. Some dialogue, some small setbacks, a problem and a guy stuck in a cube. Nothing more.

If you're an enthusiast of action or science fiction movies, this is definetly not for you. The initial scene is a trap that makes you think the movie is going to be loaded with war scenes, and the ending is as underwhelming and expected as it can be. You will most likely finish this movie disappointed.

I dont know how the movie came out in 2022. But just now getting released just now to the public. It really should have been abandoned from writing or reading the script or before production , casting , filming. We atleast know that the movie theaters did abandon this from ever being on there big screens. As most should read most of the these reviews and abandoned all hope of watching this and think something will happen or it will get better as the movie begins. That alone was hard enough to make it out of the first few minutes of the movie. I thought it was a comedy at first just going with the bad acting wild lines and just the overall look and feel of the beginning. Maybe it was cause it was a joke and in the end. I just laughed at myself for watching the whole entire movie without turning it off or shall we say Abandoned it.

Reviewing and rating this movie isn't straightforward. On the one hand, it's a noble attempt at reformulating the tried and tested high concept single location sci-fi mystery (think Cube, or Circle). On the other hand, it's a jumbled mess of ideas that ultimately lead to an underwhelming and disappointint conclusion. What compelled me to write this review is the need to inject a balanced view amid the overly harsh 1* reviews, and the utterly ridiculous 10* review that I can only assume was written by someone involved with making the movie. It's not terrible - I was intrigued enough to watch the whole thing, and only started to get bored in the final stretch of the 3rd act. Equally, it's not great. But honestly, I applaud the attempt. Here's hoping the director learns from this and comes back with a stronger script for his next feature.

I'm a huge fan of single location movies like Buried or Last Call. However the dialogue in the first 30 minutes of the movie doesn't make any sense. Only after the main character gains a bit of trust with the other party does it start to make sense, and the character development starts, but by then, I had lost a lot of the interest.

It did pick up well enough for me to finish watching the whole movie. Even if it doesn't bring a lot of new things to the table, it's still a decent enough movie that keeps you guessing what the hell is going on (even though that's never the real point of these movies). Don't expect it to be explained to you -- the ending will keep you guessing, and that's fine.

The sci-fi bits and the very few effects of the movie are quite good, but the attempt to mathematically explain what's going is absolutely nonsensical.

The movie feels like they threw Cube, Buried and Last Call into a mixer, but didn't add any other ingredients and forgot to blend or shake it. Still an entertaining watch if you're a fan of the genre.