Adults Have The Right To Disappear

GONE is one of those thrillers that works only if everyone acts like buffoons. Which means, of course, that it doesn’t work at all. It’s difficult to figure why GONE was even made, except just for the sake of making a movie. Performances, script, direction, and score are perfunctory at best and idiotic at worst.

Amanda Seyfried (JENNIFER’S BODY) stars as Jill Conway, the world’s hottest all-night-diner waitress, who suffered an emotional breakdown and spent two months in a mental hospital after she escaped from a kidnapper. A kidnapping the police believe never occurred, by the way. A year later, Jill is still shaken by her experience and really freaks when she comes home from work to discover her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) has disappeared. She thinks her kidnapper has returned and mistaken Molly for her, but the cops, including lead detective Powers (RESCUE ME regular Daniel Sunjata) shine her on.

Armed with a .38 and a wad of cash that yanks from the living room drawer (great tips in Portland), Jill, for whom lies come easily, storms the city of Portland, Oregon, dodging police and absurd red herrings in search of her sister. Scripter Allison Burnett (BLOODFIST III) and director Heitor Dhalia (ADRIFT) fall down on the job big time, so bereft of ideas that they resort to the old springloaded cat trick to draw a jump from the audience. Seriously. In 2012. There’s no mystery as to whether the calamity really is in Jill’s head, and Burnett’s response to his own plotholes is to have his characters refer to them (that doesn’t get you off the hook, my friend). GONE is a real goner.

DEXTER’s Jennifer Carpenter appears as Seyfried’s co-worker, Nick Searcy (JUSTIFIED) nimbly inhabits a friendly hardware store owner, Joel David Moore (HATCHET) is one of several jittery suspects, and ‘90s direct-to-video stalwart Michael Pare (EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS) is a welcome sight as Powers’ boss. And Wes Bentley (AMERICAN BEAUTY) is in this too, but I really couldn’t tell you why.