At this point, Screamfest is starting to feel less like a film festival and more like a horror delivery service.
Every time we turn around, another new genre film is landing on the lineup, giving horror fans another reason to keep an eye on what is coming out of Los Angeles this year. We have already dug into the folk horror of THE CAGED and the practical effects madness of WOUNDS, and now Screamfest is bringing us ABANDONED, a new hybrid found-footage horror film from a tight-knit crew in the UK. You’d think we would get enough of new horror films from all over the world; you’d be very wrong.
Directed by Joby Stephens, Abandoned stars Grace Gallagher as Jess Burn, Cameron Wight as Adam Walker, Sofie Dossi as Sadie Mortalis and Ashlee Montague as Zelda Locke. The film makes its North American premiere at Screamfest on Friday, Oct. 9, at 7 p.m. at TCL Chinese Theatre.
The story follows Jess and Adam, two urban explorers running a struggling YouTube channel called Beyond The Map. Desperate for the kind of footage that could save their channel and their friendship, the pair enter an abandoned facility in Northern England after receiving a tip from a subscriber.
Naturally, the place is not exactly abandoned.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR “ABANDONED” BELOW
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: ABANDONED follows two urban explorers who break into a derelict facility while chasing the kind of viral footage they hope will save their channel and, perhaps more importantly, their friendship. The building has a much darker history than they expected, with sinister experiments buried inside its walls. Once they are trapped within the facility, that history begins to manifest in some seriously nasty ways.
The film takes an interesting approach to the found footage format. Rather than spending the entire runtime staring through a handheld camera, ABANDONED uses cinematic sequences to bookend the central found footage material, creating a hybrid structure that moves between a more traditional horror presentation and the raw immediacy of the characters’ cameras.
The production itself sounds like one hell of an undertaking. From checking out the film’s official site, the UK-based crew spent months rehearsing on location inside an old Napoleonic fort that had been converted into a prison complex. The film was then shot over 10 intense days, with the crew actually sleeping on location inside cells.
There is also a bigger idea behind ABANDONED that caught our attention. The filmmakers are positioning the movie as a proof of concept for a different approach to independent filmmaking, with every crew member receiving a stake in the film through a points based profit system. The production has also established an “Indie Pot,” with remaining profits intended to help finance future independent projects.
That is the kind of independent filmmaking story we like to see, especially when the ambition is actually visible on the screen.
Director’s statement: “Abandoned is a horror made to immerse. Shot entirely on-location with a crew over one intense week, it stretched indie filmmaking into new ambitious territory.”
Screamfest has already given us plenty to keep tabs on this year, and ABANDONED is another reminder that some of the most interesting horror can come from filmmakers working outside the studio system.
We will be keeping an eye on this one as Screamfest continues throwing new nightmares our way.
