Gone

You'd think that Jennifer Carpenter would have had enough of serial killers.  She's been playing Dexter's sister for six seasons, now.  Did I mention that I thought season 6 of Dexter was a complete and total waste of time, given that I really liked all 5 previous seasons?  Here is my response to a close friend who thought season 6 of Dexter was "awesome."

"Yeah, Norman Bates was his own mother... no wait... Travis was Dr. Gellar... no wait... mother was in his head... no wait... meticulous clarity from a delusional mind...  no wait... Dexter finds and loses God because God took his friend and Dex loses the code... no wait... He changes the code... no wait, what's the code? Deb loves Dexter...ahh, sick considering that they were together in real life... and season closes on cliffhanger, which it never did in the past but had to do this season or nobody would watch the next season..... F**KING DISAPPOINTING SOAP OPERA NONSENSE, categorically speaking :)"

Gone. My first impression of the trailer, after seeing Amanda Sigfried's wide-set eyes was:  beware of women with wide-set eyes.  I've known a few and, in my experience, there is some form of crazy behind them.  Not that we judge on Beerbohmtastic...  

One of the nominees for a Beerbohm Award is Dream House, in the category of Most Misleading Trailer.  For some reason Gone made me think of Dream House.  Dream House was a tragic story about a delusional mind who couldn't come to grips with his past to the point of blocking it out.  His past and present collide and, in the end there is a level of closure, albeit still very tragic.

Though a slightly different story, Gone looks very similar.  Wide-eyed Amanda, who looks kind of delusional anyway, believes that her sister has been abducted by the same person that abducted her a few years earlier.  From what I get from the trailer, the police didn't believe that Amanda was abducted and she was put in an psychiatric institution OR they don't believe that Amanda's sister was abducted and they try to put her in a psychiatric institution OR both.  The point is that nobody believes her so she believes that she has to find the truth.

Finding the truth will answer: are Amanda's experiences real or is she completely delusional.  In Dream House there was a touch of reality combined with much delusion until the reality came crashing down.  In Gone, I suspect this point to be somewhat similar, but there has to be some kind of major twist.  The twist can't be that she was right all along because the trailer implies this when she talks to who we are made to think is the killer.   If that's the case then the only reason to watch the movie is to find out how she proves her story.

It seems too simple, which is annoying because the trailer tells us as much.  Maybe there is more?  Maybe she's the killer and she abducts her sister and she's messing with the police and the psychiatric profession and her friends.  And hopefully, Jennifer Carpenter doesn't walk in on Amanda killing someone like she does in Dexter.  But, you know, Amanda does have wide-set eyes...

I'll likely watch this one on-line, out of curiosity, if I come across it.