Reed Alexander's Review of 'Abattoir' (2016)

DAMN IT ABATTOIR! LET ME LOVE YOU!

I tried to review this movie twice and both times FB somehow managed to eat the review.

Well, it's about damn time I pull my head out of my bitch ass, get over my pride, and using my ass for what it's for…Shitting all over other people's art.

Actually, this wasn't half bad. It fell shy of great, but kinda like horror bubble gum, it was something for my mind to chew on. Now again, I did like the movie, but man did it really piss me off a lot. It was just fucking lazy. It feels like they phoned it in on everything they did. It had a great Lovecraftian feel, with very occult overtone, that film noir style, an unstoppable sense of a descent into madness. But everything was just spread on too thin. Rather than creating an interesting new mythos, they just ladled on the typical Anglo Christian bullshit. The cult wasn’t even very interesting.

They didn't even commit fully to the film noir style of this movie. If you remember my review of It Follows, part of that movie’s brilliance was its seamless mingling of 70s/80s horror with modern tech. Everything felt like a classic 70s/80s horror including the cars and the clothing, but with cell phones and the internet. The director of Abattoir could have at least tried to make that kind of commitment. Instead, it had the characters dress in circa 30s/40s attire and occasionally use some of the lingo. The rest is just a mishmash of whatever was around. It makes the effort to have a 30s/40s feel seem silly. With no control over the setting, it ruins the effect and kills the atmosphere.

SPOILERS!!!

This was basically a ripoff of 13 Ghosts. The primary antagonist is trying to open a gateway to hell so he can get his wife and kids out. Why are his wife and kids in hell? To pay for the antagonist’s crimes of selling snake oil sales. His family was murdered after he made himself rich off selling this one town false hopes and fake miracles. The antagonist is left for dead and his wife and children go to hell in his place. Mind you, the writer is either a hard-core atheist, a hardcore old testament follower, or he really wrote himself into a corner. That punishment is some pretty brutal old testament punishment. I mean God’s kind of a dick in this movie if that’s how it’s supposed to work.

So, how is this snake oil salesman gonna get his wife and kids out of hell? By collecting as many restless and anguishing spirits as possible and using them to open a gateway to hell…sound kinda familiar? How is he going to collect all of those spirits? By starting a cult, turning them against God and binding them into the same ritual. So now this cult has to rely on his pact to save them all from going to hell and do his bidding by going around collecting ghosts. Yeah, the God of this universe really showed that guy...

And say it with me now, in your best Morbo impersonation, "THERE WERE NO SURVIVORS!" As it turns out, the woman investigating this cult was actually being drawn back into it. Like 13 Ghosts, she was the final key to opening the gate. I mean there really just wasn't a lot of originality to this movie. That being said, it was still okay. I mean, I did enjoy watching it. I'm not sure if I can recommend it, but consider giving it a shot.