Gone

The weekend's other bomb is the straight-to-video-worthy "Gone," with Amanda Seyfried as Jill, a Portland waitress who claims she was kidnapped and left to die in a deep hole in Forest Park by a serial killer, known only as Digger, who she says is responsible for a wave of missing young women, and who she believes has now taken her sister. One minor problem: The cops don't believe her about any of it - she was involuntarily committed not so long ago - and she's forced to go after Digger herself.


The movie looks good and has the scary music in all the right places, and Seyfried (and the filmmakers) do a nice job of walking the tightrope for 80 minutes, leaving us to wonder whether it's all in Jill's head and her sister's off somewhere cramming for exams. Unfortunately, it's ham-fistedly literal throughout, telling us where it's going to take us and then, lo and behold, taking us there. And the ending is a howler, a gross violation of the spirit of the piece and not even internally consistent.