1 1/2 stars

A sort of haunted house story, "The Abandoned" has scary atmosphere, decent acting, an interesting setting %u2013 everything but a coherent story line.
The movie opens with a dying woman driving a truck into the yard of strangers, who run out to discover two crying infants along with the corpse.
Director Nacho Cerdà is known for directing edgy, stylish horror stories that deal with death. This one is less than average, as these stories go, because it takes far too long to deliver its finale.
Forty years after the death of her natural mother, Marie (Anastasia Hille), a movie producer who lives in the United States, travels to Russia to meet a notary (Valentin Ganev) who knows her parents' identities. He tells her that she has inherited their property, such as it is.
Marie hires a driver, Anatoli (Carlos Reig-Plaza) to drive her to the ruins of her family homestead, which is accessible only a bridge.
Strangely enough %u2013 a lot of things happen strangely enough in this weird movie %u2013 Anatoli deserts Marie, who discovers she isn't alone. She meets Nicolai (Karel Roden), who claims to be her biological twin. Soon, they begin to experience
things that aren't really there%u2026or are they? They hear babies crying, a woman screaming, and the voice of a man. And they see doppelgangers %u2013 images of themselves %u2013 which seem to creep about the house from time to time.
Once the set-up is established, the movie takes forever to find its way toward its end. I stopped counting how many times Marie runs around shouting for Anatoli. After she meets Nicolai and the two become separated, she runs around shouting for Nicolai.
The brother and sister make their way through the house. All the scenes except for a couple are shot with that grainy, nearly colorless atmosphere that's so familiar to long-time horror aficionados. A couple of good scares are included while Marie and Nicolai traipse around getting themselves hurt and frightened
and sometimes looking for each other.
What the movie becomes is just plain boring. You can watch Marie run from room to room and through a dark forest only so long before you'll simply give up caring about what's going to happen to her, let alone whether she will find her driver or brother again.
The show was part of last year's "After Dark Horror Fest" films that ran one weekend. That's about how long "The Abandoned" deserves to last in its second outing.

Rated: R for gore, foul language and violence.
Running time: 105 minutes.
Stars: Anastasia Hille, Karel Rodin, Valentin Ganev, Paraskeva Djukelova and
Carlos Reig-Plaza.
Director: Nacho Cerdà.
Screenwriters: Karim Hussain, Nacho Cerda and Richard Stanley.