Upamanyu Biswas
The psychological horror ‘Abandoned‘ follows Sara and Alex Davis, a young couple who move to a farmhouse after the birth of their infant son, Liam. The protagonist, Sara, suffers from postpartum depression, which has led to a strain on her relationship with her husband and a detachment from her son. However, her psychosis gets exacerbated after learning that their new farmhouse had once been the premise of a grisly murder-suicide case. The more Sara learns its history, the more the horror within the walls starts taking over her life, driving a wedge between her reality and the world within her dreams!
Solomon Farmhouse is a Fictional House With a Dark Past
The Solomon Farmhouse in ‘Abandoned’ is a fictional setting conceived by scriptwriters Erik Patterson and Jessica Scott. It is the film’s primary setting, set in a rural countryside with forests and open pastures surrounding it. One of the most prominent aspects of the house is its beautiful tree-lined driveway that goes stretches for a long distance. However, despite its exterior elegance, the house becomes a nightmare for Sara as she slowly learns that forty years prior to their moving into the place, a dark story unfolded within its halls. As a result of her worsening psychosis and her postpartum depression, Sara begins witnessing strange and inexplicable events that border on the supernatural, including the sightings of the dead Solomon family who once lived in the house.
Outside its striking rustic architecture, the house’s real origins come through the macabre story surrounding the Solomons. Sara learns from the realtor that the young girl in the house, Anna Solomon, killed her infant baby and her father, Robert Solomon, in the house before committing suicide herself. The tragic story takes an even darker turn when the neighbor, Chris Renner, tells Sara that the girl was actually being raped by her father, which led to the birth of her child. Thus, Sara feels a sense of connection to the young girl’s suffering, albeit their conditions may be different entirely. As such, its haunted aspects become more prominent the more the protagonist lingers on what happened in the confines of the house once upon a time.
Strangely, on a superficial level, the house shares a level of similarity with the Candyland House in ‘Django Unchained,‘ specifically the long driveway leading from the gates to the house’s front entrance. However, the parallels between the structures result from how all plantation houses were built back in the day, sharing various points of reference like the long driveway. In the case of ‘Abandoned,’ the production crew filmed the scenes featuring the farmhouse in the Piedmont Region of North Carolina, specifically the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and the town of Chapel Hill. The blend of locations helped weave the different parts of the primary setting in an authentic manner despite its severed ties from reality.
Read More: Where Was Abandoned (2022) Filmed?
