The vigilante chick

Gone (2012)
Certified: 14
Duration: 94 minutes
Directed by: Heitor Dhalia
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter, Wes Bentley, Sebastian Stan, Katherine Moennig, Michael Pare
KRS release

Amanda Seyfried – who shot to stardom with her role as the cute, good girl in Mamma Mia – is back with another thriller.

Lately she has followed her success in the feel-good movie of 2008 with more risqué roles such as the psychopatic seductress in Chloe (2009), the immortal spoilt daugh­ter in In Time (2011) and will be following Gone with the film Lovelace where she has the role of Linda Lovelace, the pornographic actress who had become a 1970s icon.

Jill Parish (Amanda Seyfried) is a tormented girl. She narrowly escap­ed death a year ago when she was abducted and held in a well-like hole. She manages to escape but, when she goes back with the police to find the hole, she cannot locate the place nor identify her abductor.

So Detective Powers (Daniel Sunjata) dis­be­lieves her and stops investigating.

Jill is clearly stressed out. She still searches for evidence to find who had attacked her.

When her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) disappears , Jill goes back to the police for help.

The story is not believed and only a new detective, Peter Hood (Wes Bentley), shows some form of understanding.

Jill arms herself with a gun, brings along her co-worker Sharon (Jennifer Carpenter) and her sister’s boyfriend Billy (Sebastian Shaw) and ventures once more into the forest to find her sister and make amends with her past.

Ms Seyfried pulls the role off quite well as a girl who was not believed once while now her sister is in danger. Her character is not of a good girl at all and, after all, who says that movie heroines have to be sweet and all smiles?

The tactics that she uses are duplicitous. We are suspicious of her and her stories. Yet, when it comes to her taking on her sister’s abductor, we see a shade of honesty in her that was not there before.

Ms Seyfried’s earnest perfor­mance makes for a very unusual combination. It has all the ingred­ients that seem to provide its audience with a standard plot, twists and characters but she drags the movie out of its hole and gives it a character that guarantees Gone with cult status.

Gone brings out the “crazy” element in Ms Seyfried who, pegged with her good looks and wide and earnest eyes, has great potential in over-the-top roles . The fact that she is all so bent on vigilante mode makes for a very alternative take on the chick heroine thriller genre.