The Abandoned

Never heard of it before. Not a single review on IMDB. Saw that Dread Central gave it 4/5 stars. Gave it a shot. Fast paced, kept my attention, and I'd definitely recommend it. I needed to really pay attention and the movie was good enough that I didn't mind. It's not "Se7en" but it's absolutely worth a watch. While watching it I found that I stopped scrolling on my phone about 5 minutes in and never started up again all the way through. That's usually my personal test on whether I'd recommend a movie or not. If you liked Se7en, Gone Girl, or I Saw the Devil, then you should give this a watch.

A depressed policewoman (she is on the verge of suicide in the first shot of a film) investigates the murder of a young Thai woman whom she meets by chance. Other disappearances will follow. The bodies are mutilated. Is he a serial killer? She leads the investigation and manages to find out: it concerns a girl in an illegal situation in Taiwan; they arrive from Thailand. But some disappear and are found with missing organs.

Everything often takes place at night and often in the rain, in a dark, depressive atmosphere, very successful. Our investigator is not a superhero, and the Taiwanese police don't seem very efficient either. Janine Chun-Ning Chang carries the film and carries out the investigation with difficulty.

The film is a success in its genre. It maintains the viewer's attention until the culprit is identified and his confrontation with the policewoman.

This movie is such a frustrating one to watch. I don't know it's because the screenplay writer lack of real experience of the Taiwanese police systems, or the writer really knew they are poorly trained, just a bunch of incapable morons who always failed and unable to solve any case.

How could these so-called detectives deal with the daily violent and murderous cases in Taiwan, if they are actually so lame?

This movie showing how stupid and incapable of the Taiwanese police force has inevitably make me jump to another question: If these Taiwanese cop armed with weapons are so weak and stupid, how they deal with the CCP when they invade this island and the whole society in panic?

But I have to repeat my irresistable complaint to the general shortcoming and weakness of all the Taiwanese movies. The horrible unnatural dialogue further spoiled by the poor delivery of all the Taiwanese actors or actresses. It seems once they have memorized the dialogue, every word out of their mouth simply felt so fake or even exaggerated. There's actually no realistic feelings or emotions in their dialogue, but awkward, pretentious and unreal. No real people in their daily lives would speak or talk like them. The Taiwanese screenplay writers never know how the real people in Taiwan actually speak or in real conversation. Then further foiled up by the usually poor talented Taiwanese actors and actresses, they just don't know how to talk like real people. This is the major reason why I have to stop watching Taiwanese movies after a short period, simply by losing patience and always felt uncomfortable to sit through. Almost every Taiwanese movie gave me the same feeling and outcome. It seems that Taiwanese actors, like oil and water, who never could put their acting together naturally with their dialogue.

I was expecting a decent crime thriller but instead I got me some incompetent and plain stupid police and some rather unlikeable victims' circle type characters. The whole plot rests on people acting stupid and impulsively. And in all honesty in real life they probably would not have caught the guy and got themselves killed one way or another by the way they're carrying on. I do love a vigilante type of cop but that's a whole genre and you gotta do it right. The traumatized cop is also a genre of its own, but this is not it.

Anyway, the killer bothered me too, I did not buy the motivation, his origin story, the reason he became unhinged. It doesn't seem strong enough. He also gets too many lucky breaks, or like I said, the guys in pursuit are just plain dumb exposing themselves like that. It's just unimaginative writing. The visuals are good enough, the acting is decent, we just needed better characters and story. Give this to the Scandinavians, they'll make a masterpiece of noir thriller. I mean they probably already made this movie.

I hope Justin Timberlake can forgive - on the other hand, maybe someone else will have done something with this title/phrase by the time you read this - and I do not even have to worry about telling you no pun intended ... until then, let's stay and stick with the thriller at hand. That has the inciting incident .... you guessed it right: at a river.

So if you like crime thrillers this already has some bonus or brownie points (or whatever is more to your liking). I have seen better movies than this of course, but this is at least decent, nominations can be an indicator for that too. Well shot and acted, the movie has a good pace and is well worth a watch - for those interested in a murder (mystery) story, that may be a bit different (though no entirely unpredictable)