I really felt whatever they were trying to communicate in Abandoned. I felt the mother's revulsion towards her constantly crying baby, and her subsequent guilt when she tried to bond with him. I think the director (and Emma Roberts) did an excellent job of making the viewer feel her disgust and paranoia. She gets hurt, the baby laughs. She enjoys something, the baby immediately starts screaming. I wanted that baby to go away as much as she did, but also realized how horrible the reality of that would be when the baby almost falls down the stairs, drowns in the bathtub, then gets kidnapped by the inbred creatures.
I don't like the end though. I think it could have been MUCH more appropriate if she had been sitting there with a dead baby when she had her "breakthrough" and made breakfast for her husband, that would have been a much more creepy ending for a horror movie. The saccharine sweet happy ending was a bit jarring, and showing her being pregnant again didn't frighten me, it made me feel sorry for her. I kept thinking, this woman shouldn't be a mother, I truly thought for at least half the movie that was the answer, that it was going to turn around and we'd find out her husband was abusive, he smashed the music box and forced her into this mother role she didn't want.
But nah, that didn't happen, either.
So the movie isn't perfect as a horror film, I can think of at least two more disturbing endings, but I honestly felt frightened in some scenes, and I am not always frightened by horror movies.
I don't like the end though. I think it could have been MUCH more appropriate if she had been sitting there with a dead baby when she had her "breakthrough" and made breakfast for her husband, that would have been a much more creepy ending for a horror movie. The saccharine sweet happy ending was a bit jarring, and showing her being pregnant again didn't frighten me, it made me feel sorry for her. I kept thinking, this woman shouldn't be a mother, I truly thought for at least half the movie that was the answer, that it was going to turn around and we'd find out her husband was abusive, he smashed the music box and forced her into this mother role she didn't want.
But nah, that didn't happen, either.
So the movie isn't perfect as a horror film, I can think of at least two more disturbing endings, but I honestly felt frightened in some scenes, and I am not always frightened by horror movies.