Big Screen Peter: Gone

Gone is a prototypical post-Oscar movie. Which is both the best and worst thing that can be said for it. It's just filler, a sort of cinematic filibuster that is thrust upon the masses to stall until the yearly circuit begins anew in the spring and summer months.

It's our Punxtawney Phil.

Unfortunately, the little bastard has seen his shadow and tucked back into the burrow: quality cinema might still be a few weeks out.

Gone is low-budget flier directed by Heitor Dhalia and starring Amanda Seyfried.

The story, if separated from what unfolds on screen, seems promising: Portland girl goes missing, is found muddy, but alive a few days later in the woods with a tale of abduction. No evidence is found, no one believes the story, and the girl is institutionalized after a mental breakdown.

Fast forward two years, the girl is still paranoid, but largely functional when her sister disappears. Convinced her abductor is back, she goes to the police, but because no evidence was initially discovered, skepticism abounds.

All of the characteristics for a great, mind-bending noir flick are there, ripe for the picking. The isolation, the skewed perspective. Reality and un-reality have the potential to meld into this thick and engrossing gray area that permeates great psychological thrillers.

This is where a conjunction is interjected.

Possibility and reality never quite match up in Gone. Instead of paranoia, we get bad acting. Instead of  mystery we get obvious plot turns and cliched narrative.

It all begins with Seyfried, playing the lead role of Jill. If she is what passes for acting, let the prophets foretell the doom of all eternity. Reality is brought to the fore through the situations around her character, not the portrayal.

But she's just the tip. The iceberg is the entire Portland, Ore. police staff, starting with Daniel Sunjata as Detective Powers. The intention, one would presume, is for Powers to be a hard-boiled, no-nonsense kind of cop. You know, the one you've seen in a thousand cop dramas on TV or movies already. And if he was able to pull that off, perhaps some slice of reality would have been salvaged out of an otherwise overblown crapfest.

No such luck for the audience.

The earnest portrayal is as real as it is poor. Which, in a strict sense, is a perfect summation for the movie itself. If Gone was a little more self-aware, that earnestness might be diffused into a sort of post-modern irony. Nervy fear seeded with a campy wink to the audience.

For the filmmaker and the actors, Gone never lives up to its potential — real or ironic. It has a few moments of lively fear, but on a whole it is a lifeless piece; one that never comes close to being worth your while as a moviegoer.

Instead, take a lesson from that Keystone rodent: head back to the den until the cineplex has something a bit better to offer.

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