Abattoir
In “Abattoir”, a clever idea and capable actors are taken by the director Darren Lynn Bousman, only to produce one of the most confusing and least effective horror films in recent memory. Not only is the dialogue awkward and unbelievable it reads as if written by a teenager raised on bad horror movies alone. Not only is the pacing clunky it’s edited in such a way that feels almost designed to distract.
The performances are bad across the board, even from actors who generally do good work. It’s one of those movies that’s so inept on every level that you kind of want to recommend it. If you believe you can learn as much from bad movies, maybe more, as from good ones, this is a master class in what not to do.
Perhaps “Abattoir” hurts so much because there’s actually a decent concept buried beneath all the incompetent filmmaking. Jessica Lowndes plays Julia Talben, a real estate reporter whose family is slaughtered by a sociopath; when she goes back to the crime scene after the funeral with her cop buddy Declan (Joe Anderson), she finds that the room where her loved ones were killed has literally been ripped out of the rest of the house.
They dig deeper and wind up going into Julia’s past, including the town where she was born where things aren’t exactly right, shall we say while learning that Jebediah Crone (Dayton Callie) is constructing a home made entirely out of rooms where horror has occurred well, if one unexpected death in your house creates a haunting, imagine what dozens would do.
“Abattoir” is about 90% exposition again, no surprise coming from the man who directed three lesser “Saw” sequels but it’s still dispiriting to watch something that should have character and atmosphere offer only plot instead. Julia and Declan have to investigate the murder, then the room disappearance, then her past, then Jebediah, and so forth. It’s basically a bunch of s*** about what they’ve just learned culminating in a sequence that’s supposed to be terrifying but is really more reassuring because you know the movie is almost over.
This would be the point in the review where one would go on and on about all of this film’s various inadequacies jarring tonal shifts, clichéd dialogue, etc. But maybe it’s better to keep it short and bitter. Perhaps every movie teaches us something; perhaps not even all bad movies do. Maybe some are just bad.
Watch Abattoir For Free On Solarmovies.