Gone (2006)

Just what I expected

Admirable film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

This obvious Wolf Creekish sort of film is definitely no Wolf Creek. It's mostly a flat drama, where it's last ten minutes actually intensifies, but this plot point should of been somewhere near the middle. An American guy, meets an English couple while backpacking, where slowly we begin to an unravel a darker side to their new found friend, who develops an obsession on the English girl. One incident at a party, he crosses paths with a girl he scr...d over, justifying himself to his friends that he doesn't know this girl. And with this new English girl, we know all too well, that "Three's Company" scenerio, especially when the odd man out, Taylor, is a nutter, and has nasty plans to annihilate his competition. Disappointing as this film was, and that's putting it mildly, Taylor was played with the right blend of psychotic calm and menace, by an unknown in a film that didn't return the compliment. To future scriptwriters out there who pen their first pic, watch and learn from this about poor story development or the lack of it.

This is one of those movies that I couldn't help myself scream at the TV "You stupid morons just keep going your own way!" It was so obvious what is going on that you just hope the main characters pay for their stupidity and ignorance.The story begins when a young British traveler, by the name Alex, arrives in Sydney and he is schedule to meet with his girlfriend. But before that, he meets another young American traveler by the name of Taylor. Taylor convinces Alex to have a few drinks that first night and meet some girls before Alex gets to his destiny. The next day, Taylor meets Alex girlfriend, Sophie, and immediately becomes obsess with her. Then Taylor devises ways to separate them and gain Sophie's favor to the point of becoming homicidal. This movie is predictable from the opening credits. The writers didn't develop a plot where they could engage the audience, instead, they wrote a poor, predictable story. Although you might think that the American backpacker is not to be trusted, you know he is the villain the first minute he is introduced in the movie. There are no surprises and movie just drags on to the inevitable conclusion, which in my mind, is pretty lame. Although at a certain point Alex realizes what is going on, he just doesn't do anything to prevent it, and that is what really bothered me about this movie.Gone tries miserably to be like Psycho and the Hitcher, but instead is an epic fail.

This sounds like a nice premise. A British couple in Australia who meet up with a psychotic American who seems nice at first but turns deadly.Unfortunately, this isn't really what happens...the guy slowly becomes weird and creepy, but it's all completely one sided.Alex arrives alone in Australia and will meet his girlfriend Sophie in a couple of days. Taylor meets him and invites him for drinks the night Alex arrives in Australia sans Sophie. Alex gets drunk and falls asleep next to a girl and Taylor gets a polaroid of it...just a taste of the creepiness to come. When Sophie arrives, Taylor brings out his massive stack of polaroids (weird), and proceeds to toss the photo of Alex and the girl into the trash. Except he never really throws it away and holds it over Alex's head. Slowly, Taylor starts making it seem that he and Sophie have a thing going on, doing everything he can to turn the lovers against each other.This is either a horror movie or a thriller as described on this site and the on screen guide when I watched it on Chiller. Unfortunately, it's neither thrilling nor horrifying, and Taylor isn't really all that weird. We get the impression that he's probably pretty dark deep down inside his core, but he's more malicious in small ways. For example, he sees Alex come into the bar where he and Sophie are sitting together, Sophie's back to the door- he immediately pretends to have a burning in his hand, so Sophie grabs it, making it look to Alex as if they're holding hands. (thrillingly scary and creepy!) The fact is, all Alex has to do is say- look, Sophie, I fell asleep next to some girl, nothing happened, but this guy keeps popping out this pic and being creepy weird. Sophie, if she had any sense, would say, "okay, honey. Let's head off without him." Too bad the characters are dreadfully stupid. They do everything they SHOULDN'T do in a movie like this, and that makes it all tedious and frustrating. When about 20 mins before the end, it gets really dumb. I won't ruin the ending, but let's say it's just as stupid as the rest of the film.The acting is decent, I guess. It's hard to tell, as they all have so little to work with. They're just basically cruising around from place to place, not doing much, drinking a lot, arguing a bit here and there, and just being completely dumb characters. Taylor isn't some evil super genius, and he doesn't need to be. He only needs to find a couple who are so desperately stupid, they'd fall for any dumb tactics, and he's set.Dumb characters ruin what sounds like a good premise. On top of that, very little takes place in the movie. With 15 mins left in the flick, you're wondering if anything IS going to happen at all. No thrills to be had here, I can assure you.Nice scenery, nice setting, fantastic premise, but poorly executed in every manner. Skip it.

Utterly derivative psycho on the road movie. We've seen it all before and to make things worse pretty much nothing happens throughout. I looked at the clock after twenty minutes and was still waiting for some semblance of story to begin. I was still waiting after an hour. There's a difference between understated and not stated at all. Who is the creepy Taylor? What happened in Thailand?Questions are left unanswered and the ending predictable. "Are you f****ing thick?" the main character asks his girlfriend when she fails to spot Taylor's intentions. Apparently so. She's obviously never seen Dead Calm, Single White Female, Pacific Heights and a million other movies with the same premise. To be fair the acting is acceptable but otherwise what on earth is Working Title doing wasting their time with this?