Abattoir (2016)
Gareth Jones
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Starring Joe Anderson, Jessica Lowndes, Lin Shaye, Michael Paré, Dayton Callie
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
Screened at FrightFest 2016
Feisty journalist Julia (Lowndes) is tired of writing for the real estate section of her employer’s newspaper. She’d much rather be working the crime scenes, and this bleeds through into her writing to such a degree that Darren Lynn Bousman’s Abattoir opens on her exasperated editor finding himself torn between chastisement and praise.
Soon after, Julia does indeed find herself on a crime scene when she receives a phone call from a man (Paré) informing her that he has just murdered her sister. Arriving at her sister’s home, Julia is devastated to find the entire family slain in the upstairs bedroom.
With the perpetrator apprehended, Julia is joined by detective Grady (Anderson) as they attempt to unravel the mystery behind the killing… and why the room in which it took place has completely disappeared from Julia’s sister’s house.
Their search takes them to the secluded – and decidedly hostile – town of New English, where they wind up on the trail of a seemingly legendary individual, spoken of in hushed tones, by the name of Jebediah Crone (Callie). Crone appears to be collecting rooms in which vicious murders and brutal deaths took place… the reason for which may just spell doom for Julia and Grady. And, in Abattoir’s case, leave the audience scratching their heads and wondering just what exactly the people supporting Crone are getting out of this… amongst many other questions.
The problems with Darren Lynn Bousman’s film are numerous. In a stylistic choice, Julia and Grady’s characters are presented as though they stepped right out of the 1950s – the opening newsroom scene feeling lifted from any number of period gangster flicks, much like one of Crone’s murder rooms.
Except the film isn’t period. When Julia visits her sister’s thoroughly modern home, there’s nary a mention of Julia’s peculiar fashion tastes and choice of diction. She and Grady both drive ‘50s-era cars with cellphone GPS mounted to the dash, and whilst things like this are an obvious stylistic choice by Bousman, it simply doesn’t fit together. It’s uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons.
The same goes for the supposed ‘town’ of New English, which looks more like the environs of an industrial plant hastily kitted out with doorways to indicate different buildings than anything remotely resembling a functional town. On the outskirts lie what appear to be sprawling swamplands and the gigantic homestead of Allie (Lin Shaye), an old lady who may or may not be on Julia and Grady’s side.
There’s little geographical cohesion to it all and a severely lacking sense of place. As with the presentation and behaviour of Julia and Grady, this would be fine in terms of keeping the audience on edge – unsteady and unsure in this supernatural, dream-like atmosphere – but when the characters are just nipping to and fro without much of a worry as to why the environs feel so strange and disconnected, it’s impossible to be anything but genuinely confused.
The central mystery behind the missing murder rooms and the trail of dead that Crone’s activities appear to have left behind is certainly compelling and manages to hold attention despite the lacklustre, one-track central characters… but once Julia and Grady hit New English, Abattoir takes a very quick narrative nose dive despite the best efforts of the always delightful Lin Shaye.
Now, that’s not to put down the rest of the cast – Lowndes and Anderson give it their all, clearly eating up the hard-boiled lingo and nature of their characters, but they can’t escape the all-encompassing awkwardness that the rest of the film places upon them. Dayton Callie is quietly malevolent as the eloquent and subtly powerful Jebediah Crone – a villain who deserves far better exploration than he ever gets here.
On the plus side, Abattoir is one fantastic looking film. Bousman’s eye for visuals has been apparent for some time, but here he really goes all out. Sequences involving Julia staggering through something of a spook-house filled with the eternally-looping demises of shimmering spectres is inventive and wonderfully realised. In fact, it seems that as the quality of the narrative crumbles, Bousman’s visuals get stronger.
Leaving far too many logical gaps unfilled and sporting a constant sense of incongruence which simply isn’t utilised to the film’s benefit, Abattoir is little more than a beautiful, hyper-stylised mess – and the deliciously downbeat ending is just far too little, too late.
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Film
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