Gone comes so close to being a really decent movie that it’s disheartening to report that it doesn’t quite follow through by the end. This paranoia based thriller starring Amada Seyfried shows a wealth of promise. The performances are solid across the board for this type of film filled with obvious red herrings and sneering villainous types. The direction from Brazilian Heitor Dhalia feels tight and the script from Allison Burnett might be dumb as a box of rocks, but at least its filled with some memorably cheesy exchanges and some genuinely interesting subtext. What doesn’t work about the movie? The fact that the movie was quite obviously sliced to ribbons in the editing room, with what feels like the least of several potential alternate endings ultimately making it into the final cut. For all the craft and effort that obviously went into making the film, it simultaneously feels bad to bash the film and yet it’s totally inexcusable not to.
Following an abduction and subsequent escape one year earlier, Jill (Seyfried) still suffers from post traumatic stress. She’s become a pill popping, compulsively lying, hyper-sensitive mess living in the care of her sister (Emily Wickersham). When her sibling mysteriously disappears the morning of an important economics exam, Jill automatically begins to suspect the worst and sets out to get help. Her biggest obstacle, however, is that the police don’t believe her story and they never believed her own abduction was real since there was never any evidence or any suspects found. Jill knows the abductor still lurks out there and she begins to take the law into her own hands.
To say any more than that would be to spoil some genuinely decent plot points that occur later in the film regarding Seyfried’s character and her heavily implied mental instability. The young actress has one of her finest performances to date here, as some who has learned to adapt to any given situation through a heightened fight or flight response. If Liam Neeson in Taken were heavily medicated and his skill set was being able to talk his way out of any situation, you would get the tone that the filmmakers and the actress are going for.
The supporting cast is mostly made up of familiar faces playing eccentric weirdos (Joel David Moore as a locksmith, Nick Searcy as a cantankerous neighbour) idiotic cops (a winning trio of Daniel Sunjata as the angry doubter, Wes Bentley as the creepy idealist rookie, Katherine Moennig as the one who has great hair and always looks pissed, and Michael Pare as their boss), and Jennifer Carpenter as a co-worker who cautiously believes Jill’s story, but still wants no real part in helping her.
Gone boasts some extremely well staged set pieces and gorgeous cinematography that manages to make Portland, Oregon look somewhat menacing. Dhalia isn’t reinventing any genres here, but his technical proficiency means the movie moves at a decent enough pace that the script’s glaring plot holes and lapses in logic are almost charming. The film certainly never gets boring for a second, but since the film is so good at building tension and having fun with the audience (including the most blatant “cat jumping out of a door” scare that it’s obviously played for laughs) that it makes the film’s eventual collapse all the more frustrating.
The film reeks of producer or test audience tinkering. There are so many red herrings that just show up an disappear that there had to be more to the movie than this. It’s introduced that Seyfried’s character has skills other than lying, but they are never really brought up again. Scenes feel oddly and awkwardly re-shot to the point where single lines of dialogue are inserted to explain plot conveniences. As for the actual ending, it really stinks and casts a pall over a film that was perfectly serviceable trashy entertainment otherwise. The film expends so much energy on trying to pull the rug out from under the audience all the time that the ending feels like the worst sort of cheat. Which in an odd way could actually work in a film’s favour, but not when the rest of the production is this choppy. Still, it’s mostly fun if you can just shut your brain off entirely and stop wondering what the film might’ve been instead of what it is.
Rating: 
Rated 14A
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer Carpenter, Daniel Sunjata
Directed by: Heitor Dhalia
Top image: A scene from Gone. Courtesy eOne Films.
