John Chard

Kidnap Thriller 101. Sarcastic Spoilers Within Review. Off the bat lets say it, Gone is not a very bad movie, it has the requisite mystery elements, Amanda Seyfried makes for an engaging lead as the once kidnapped girl who nobody seems to believe, the cinematography (Michael Grady) is high quality and there's some decent moments of chills along the way. Unfortunately the film just exists as a case of unadventurous screenplay writing. Gone is written by Allison Burnett, who writes it like some homework assignment set by a bored lecturer at a film studies class. Everything about it is rank and file what you have seen a million times before in this type of genre offering. A bunch of characters file in for cameos under the guise of red herrings, while our spunky heroine single handedly out-foxes the whole of the Portland police force, while naturally evading capture at every juncture. Everyone but Seyfried's character are just on the periphery of things, where the likes of Wes Bentley and Jennifer Carpenter stand around hoping for the script to give them something worthwhile to do. In fact Carpenter's character is a set up for a late plot development, only for it to be the last we see of her, which is just bizarre in hindsight. Then the "big" finale arrives and the serial killer/kidnapper arrives and gets afforded the same "none" time as everyone else. Nothing remotely original here, sadly. It serves decent enough as a time filler, but once the hopelessly weak finale plays its hand, you may come away asking yourself this question, why do films like this continually get green lit by studios when they have nothing more to offer other than putting another title on a budding actor's CV? 5/10