The Horror Show
Abattoir
by Darren Lynn Bousman
Darren Lynn Bousman is one director who has both tickled me and made me weep openly. His films are so hit or miss. He has given us some of really great things like Repo! The Genetic Opera and three out of seven released movies in the Saw franchise. Then he turns around and gives us the piss poor remake of the Troma classic Mother's Day and this weird mish mash of a ghost story called Abattoir.
This review contains spoilers.
Abattoir is all about Julia, a reporter. She dresses like it's 1950, she drives a 1965 Plymouth Satellite, and she's very upset that she can't do the hard hitting stories. I am already irritated with this character. She is having an on again, off again relationship with a very gun-happy cop named Grady. I swear, this man pulls his gun so many times in this movie it's frightening. We meet her sister, her sister's husband, and Charlie, her nephew. These people are here for clunky exposition about her deadbeat mother and plot fodder. The only reason I know the nephew's name is because Julia yells it a lot later on. Charlie has a mysterious illness and Julia gives him a skateboard. She makes the claim that she “will never let anything hurt him,” and in the next scene the whole family is murdered.
Five days later the house is sold, which causes some suspicion. Julia and Grady go to check the crime scene like the freaking Scooby gang and the crime scene has been removed from the house. The whole room has just been packed up. I mean the entire room, walls and all. This makes Julia go pull some more exposition from the realtor. He explains that this isn't the first murder scene to go missing. With her Super Reporter Powers she decides to research all these missing rooms. Apparently they are all linked to the small town called New English where Julia and her sister were born. Julia packs her car and heads to New English.
When she arrives, she is pretty much told by every person she meets to leave. She meets Allie (played by Lin Shaye) and Allie lets her stay with her in her dead mother's house. Grady shows up, because he's a weird stalker cop, and through the magical exposition film strip that Allie has for some reason we learn that the town is under the control of the weird man buying up all the murder rooms, Jebediah Crone. He has taken all these rooms and built a giant tragedy house out in the woods: a big old haunted mansion. Apparently, all the children of New English had been promised as sacrifices to Crone. Julia and her sister were the last. Oh, and SURPRISE Allie is their mother.
That's pretty much it. The end is so confusing, maybe the graphic novel is better. I can't really say. The only thing I can get behind is Lin Shaye. That woman can make the worst movies delightful when she is on the screen. I would watch Lin Shaye just being insane for 92 minutes.
I have seen much better from Darren Lynn Bousman. Crone is a poor rip off of Reverend Kane from Poltergiest 2, the two leads talk like they have a mouth full of marbles, nothing make sense, and you really don't feel for these characters. They're so unlikable. I was so happy when this movie was over.
Robin Thompson, HMS
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