Review #35: Abattoir (2016)


This review was originally written in October 2017.

Horror Movie October day 5: Abattoir

I found this movie kind of hard to follow for most of it, which is disappointing because I feel like all of the components were really good. The plot started off really really interesting- the main character's sister's (I think?) family gets murdered, and when she tries to investigate the house where it happened (which has been sold, very soon after) she realizes the entire room where the murders took place is gone. Like, someone came in and stripped away the walls and ceiling and everything in the room. She looks into it further, and finds out that there's been a series of bizarre murders where immediately afterwards the builders are purchased, and somehow the room of the murders are gutted and removed.

Then the movie gets into this weird space in the middle where the main character travels to some backwater town where everyone is rude and nobody answers any of her questions, and it turns out there's a cult or something and Lin Shaye is there and even though it sounds interesting, I just couldn't follow it. Then the movie ends in this really cool-looking MC Escher-style amalgamation of all of the rooms that were stolen? Or something? Again, all of the components of this sound right up my alley but for some reason it was really hard to follow the middle 45-60 minutes of this movie. Maybe some day when I have more time I'll go back and watch this one again and maybe I'll appreciate it more.

Final Rating: 6/10 Secret Skateboards

Another Movie This Made Me Want to Watch: The Ruins (since the male lead in this film played one of the main roles in that, plus it's a good movie)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review #181: The Evil Dead (1981)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #36: The Evil Dead (1981) As much as I'm trying to make these reviews as standalone as possible, I feel the need to tie this one (at least a little bit) into the last one (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and the next one (Evil Dead II). So, bear with me I guess. I'm a huge fan of the Evil Dead series as a whole. Evil Dead II was one of the first horror films I ever saw, and for many years was my favorite movie of all time. However, I was never a very big fan of the first movie; I only saw The Evil Dead a couple times and when I did, it felt "lesser" than Evil Dead II in every way. I'll save most of my comments about EDII until the next review, but I just want to say that in this particular rewatch, I came out liking The Evil Dead WAY more than I used to, and liking Evil Dead II a little bit less (though I still love it). If you aren't familiar with the series at all, The E
Read more

Review #153: The Endless (2018)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #8 - The Endless (2018) A disclaimer: Most of this review is going to be me complaining about the logistics and mechanics of this movie, and it's going to be full of spoilers. I'll try to summarize my non-mechanical thoughts as concisely as possible. The Endless is an interesting film created by writing/directing duo Benson and Moorhead. Apart from Spring (which to my knowledge doesn't fit into this film's universe, though I could be mistaken) this was the first Benson & Moorhead joint I'd seen, and I was instantly intrigued by the premise: two brothers escaped a cult ten years ago, and after hearing that the cult was seemingly getting ready to kill themselves, they go back for one last visit to get some closure. When they get there, they realize that the cult's supernatural beliefs seem to be true, and they get caught up in a strange web of timey-wimeyness under the u
Read more

Review #179: It (2017)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #34: It (2017) I read It about twenty years ago; it's probably the longest book I've read in full. I think the book is very, very good (though also very, very Stephen King, which means there's a lot in its pages that makes it quantitatively worse than it could be) and for the most part this movie is a faithful adaptation... of half of it. I'll save most of my book vs. movie complaints for later on, but I'll just say that the book itself is two very important and very intertwined halves of a story, and while I understand the reasoning to cut it in half (doing the whole book justice would take well over four hours' worth of screentime), I really do think it does the whole story a disservice when this entire film starts and ends with the characters as kids. The book is constantly jumping back and forth between the child half of the story and the adult half, to the point where
Read more