"Abandon", despite its marketing, is a drama, not horror, not thriller, no sir. But the worst thing is this tries desperately hard to pass itself off as horror or at least a decent supernatural thriller, but only by the second half does it tend to actually become a supernatural thriller, and a thriller of intricate sorts with an end story that I liked, but first we must sit through endlessly dull dialogue, bland and very uninteresting character emphasis through a cast of characters that not only fail to capture our interest through endless dialogue that seemingly goes nowhere, and sub plots that mean absolutely nothing and have no clear relevance to the story, including the telling of Deschanel's character's back story that not only has her completely wasted as both a character and talented actress.

She has nothing redeeming about her personalities in making the audience get to like her, and there's also Gabrielle Union who has barely any back story and rarely appears, and there's Melanie Lynskey, the always talented character actress who has nothing to do here except play the token loser, and, what I discovered in the end, was that none of the sub-plots have no relevance to the story's climax, so ultimately if feels like we wasted an immense amount of our time through nonsensical ramblings and situations meant as character emphasis when really it's just a long waste of time and effort.

This is a movie that is so murky, so dark and so dreadful on the eyes, it's remarkable if the viewer sits all the way through up until the last moments, because there is a rather good surprise, but there is a whole lot of nonsense here you have to sit through until you get to it, and by then you're not surprised because you've either been so bored you gave up on caring, or you fell asleep, as I almost did a couple of times. Honestly, if you sat through this endless film, you deserve a gold star. The surprise ending does not compensate for the first hour and a half we have to sit through to get to. There are plenty of actors here who have nothing to do but show up on occasion including Benjamin Bratt as the dark and murky cop with a bad past who never really performs any real police work except walk around and ask a lot of questions which never shows he's a good detective but it's a cheap excuse to give us Catherine's back story.

Mark Feurerstein plays the obligatory slimy exec, and Tony Goldwyn is the flirtatious but content therapist... (long loud yawn). If only poor Tony could be put to better use in movies we'd see what a great actor he is. Not to mention Charlie Hunnam as the enigmatic and incredibly pompous and obnoxious Embry Larkin who serves as a motive for the story, but we never do manage to discover what interest and infatuation Catherine has with him, because he's a truly despicable character who we're supposed to find artistic and we never do, and in turn, we never buy into the other characters worshipping him either.

He spouts nonsensical dialogue, stupid philosophy that could be spoken by anyone, and ridiculous mannerisms trying to come off as a savant, when really all I wanted to do was beat him like he groped my girl. The film attempts to look a lot like a "Sixth Sense" meets "Soul Survivor" flick, though why they'd want to copy that piece of melodramatic hokum is beyond me, but must they continue copying "The Sixth Sense"?

We never do find out if the male antagonist and character that the story revolves around disappeared himself, disappeared, or was killed, and that's something the writer's never explain to the audience, so we're left wondering; that's a plot element that can't be excused because we can only assume about the main character Catherine Burke in the end and we're left thinking about it with no satisfaction present. The film has this notion that the plot is a lot more complicated than it should be when really it's just another teen thriller with the guise of an intelligent thriller.

Perhaps if the story was more compelling and the writers built up enough of the right tension for the audience, and perhaps if the acting was a lot better, this could have been good, but, man, it's not. Murky, and dark do not work without the right script and that's nowhere to be found here.

This is a dull, pretentious, and godly dreary quasi-thriller that goes nowhere and doesn't reach anything that resembles a point. Though the ending is surprising and pretty creepy, the time spent on emphasis, sequences, and odd characters serve no purpose for such a boring melodrama.

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