Gone

If there is one thing Amanda Seyfried is good at, it’s looking nervous and swishing her blonde hair back and forth. She perfected the skill in Jennifer’s Body, Red Riding Hood and Chloe; Gone serves as the latest vehicle for her wide-eyed charm.

Seyfried plays Jill, an emotional young woman who is convinced that her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) has been kidnapped by the same man who abducted Jill herself two years ago. We quickly learn that she’s a little crazy, and begin to question the truth in her accusations. The police see her as the girl who cried wolf, and refuse to take on her sister’s case. So, she does what anybody would do—she decides to take on the task of finding her sister by herself, equipped with a gun. Rather than devoting resources toward a missing persons investigation, the entire police force of Portland, Oregon foregoes any attempt to rescue Jill’s sister in favor of trying to catch Jill herself instead. The whole thing quickly devolves into an elongated chase scene that involves a lot of bad driving and Seyfried angrily hanging up on the police on her iPhone—there’s a Portland joke to be made here, but we’ll leave it to Fred Armisen.

Gone’s premise is fine—hardly revolutionary, but not a handicap, either. The script, though, is what holds it back. The conversation is stilted at best: something like ten different red herrings fail to develop, a good-cop love interest never pans out. Past that, about 90% of the movie is spent watching Seyfried look worried in her car or concluding that someone must be a kidnapper on the basis of a purchase of duct tape. The frequent car chases are boring and unconvincing, and Seyfried is repeatedly able to escape because a random stranger gives her his keys. The last half hour of the movie, which consists of Seyfried driving through a creepy forest far away from any hint of civilization, is laughable. And after all that, the climax is generic and predictable.

Gone delivers exactly what its trailer promises: dark, creepy chase scenes and a lot of Amanda Seyfried. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot in between.