Each night of the festival had a movie that was more of an artistic mood piece than a schlocky bloodfest. And that’s okay, because there are different kinds of horror, and each should be celebrated in its own way. The second night’s Reincarnation was The Abandoned, whose horror tropes were a mix of decay, inescapable claustrophobia, and Eastern European legends; but one of the types that has not readily made it across to America like vampires and werewolves have. (Although werewolves were already here; but that’s beside the point.)

Our heroine (who although blond, is not petite) isn’t having her best life ever. She was brought to America as an infant in the 1960s, her Russian name relegated to the middle so her adoptive parents could give her a name they were more comfortable with. Now she’s divorced, with a teenage daughter who has about as much respect for her as teenage daughters in the full flower of rebellion ever have for their mothers. As her forty-second birthday approaches, Milla has an urge to reconnect with the motherland, either prompting or prompted by (I forget which) correspondence with local officials from the region of her birth, who provide her with the necessary information about the Russian family who found her and her twin as infants. Well, found is a strong word; in point of fact, their mother drove up in a wrecked pickup and died in the family’s yard, leaving the squalling infants in the seat beside her to whoever might come along and take care of them. So, okay, I admit this is convoluted and I’m not doing the best job of explaining it, but the movie did fine at the same task, so good on them.

Here’s the thing, though. In horror movies, it’s always better if the past stays buried. Even from the first moments of Milla’s arrival in Russia, it’s clear that something isn’t right. The wrongness continues to grow and grow as she gets closer to the house from which her dying mother fled all those years ago, and before she knows it, she and her twin (who arrived at the same time, although they had never before met and were summoned in different ways, and obviously that isn’t a good sign) are trapped by the house to try to survive the fate that something, or someone, has in store for them. Being the moodish introspective kind of movie, the drive-in totals really don’t work here. (Plus I’m starting to feel a little plagiaristic, whether it’s been that kind of weekend or not.) But it was certainly good, as well as genuinely scary.