The Abandoned (2023) Movie Review – The corpse always chooses the cop

The corpse always chooses the cop

The Taiwanese crime drama The Abandoned has now dropped on Netflix. A dark tale that presents itself as a police procedural crime drama mixed with horror film tones hits on a lot of positive notes for fans who love international crime stories. However, a convoluted second act that follows a well-paced opening hurts the film’s dramatic, upbeat climax.

The world of migrant workers is the setting for this murder mystery. One night, our film’s lead character, Wu Jie, sits alone in her car. Just by the tone of the shot and the performance of Janine Chun-Ning Chan, we can tell something dark is afoot. She puts a gun to her lower jaw, and prior to any sort of suicide attempt being executed, she is startled by a woman hysterically knocking on her window and telling her that a dead body has been discovered.

Why was Detective Wu Jie about to kill herself? We find out that her fiancee did just the same; as a matter of fact, he did it in that exact car. There is a bullet wound in the roof of the car that killed him. Wu Jie is a character we have seen many times in cop dramas, but it’s interesting to see these same PTSD problems from a woman’s perspective this time.

Shot for shot of the first twenty minutes of the movie makes you think you are in store for a police procedural that wants to dip its toe into some dark, demented Asian horror. But it never fully goes there. Every scene is lit and executed like you’re waiting for some paranormal threat to be discovered. But it continues on as the mystery of where the body came from prior to Wu Jie almost shooting herself.

There is nothing to critique in a negative way about the performances in The Abandoned. Nothing feels phoned in from the cast all the way down to the killer’s reveal. Janine Chun’s performance feels very lived-in as someone dealing with a lot of trauma.

Ethan Juan plays Lin You Shang, one of the standout supporting roles in the film, who you must keep a watchful eye on as the case unfolds. He’s not necessarily the nicest guy, but does that make him the villain in all of this? That is the question poised for the audience.

The world of migrant workers in Taiwan is explored, as it is the environment that the victims all spawn from. Wu Jie has to put her personal demons on the back burner for a moment and team up with a likeable, comedic rookie cop to track down the killer. We find the reveal of who has caused these heinous acts against multiple women in a place that was right under our noses.

On the downside, The Abandoned gets lost in the second act, with information overloaded in its mystery of who the killer is. So, therefore, when the reveal happens, you question the impact of the surprise. It’s a ride of a movie with a likeable character arc for its lead, but the strength of all that gets muddled and, frankly, abandons any sort of cathartic payoff that the film pushes on its audience in the final moments.

Read More: The Abandoned Ending Explained

Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!