Abattoir (2016)
Staci Layne Wilson
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Starring Jessica Lowndes, Dayton Callie, J. LaRose, Joe Anderson, Lin Shaye
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
An Abattoir is a slaughterhouse. And houses where slaughters happened is just the selling point one diabolical homebuyer is interested in.
His name is Crone (Dayton Callie), and he’s building the ultimate haunted house. Hunting the real estate section for hardship listings where murders, suicides, and other various tragedies took place, Crone gets killer deals and then does some rather unusual remodeling: He rips the crime scene out.
So if an occupant slits her wrists in the tub, the bathroom is removed. If a home invader kicks in the door and murders a family in the foyer, then the entryway is excised. If a baby is suffocated in his nursery, the room is deleted. Where those chambers wind up is a mystery. After several newly-purchased houses across the country are left in pieces, Julia, a puzzled real estate reporter, tries to figure out just what is going on… and why.
Julia (Lowndes) soon teams up with Grady (Anderson), and the two find themselves on the trail of the enigmatic bargain hunter, which leads them to a strange small town that’s full of secrets and surrounded by the dark forest where Crone’s nightmare home is being built, brick by blood-soaked brick.
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, Abattoir is based on a collection of comics he created a few years back. The premise stays largely the same, but with sharp genre screenwriters aboard – Chris Monfette, who’s worked with Clive Barker, and David J. Schow, who wrote The Crow and much more – it really reinvents the haunted house genre. Usually the focus is on the phantoms, but in this case it’s about someone exploiting tragedies, and believing those awful events leave a residue of evil, he is constructing pre-fab of pure horror.
The cast is great across the board – from the leads to small character cameos – but Abattoir is made so much scarier and memorable thanks to gravitas of Callie and the inimitable Lin Shaye, who plays one of the more peculiar inhabitants of the creepy old burg where Crone is building his palace of pain.
I generally like everything Bousman’s done as a director – some more than others, but that’s usually influenced by the subject matter. I’m a sucker for haunted house thrillers, so Abattoir is pretty much a shoo-in for me. But what I think horror fans will like about it is its originality; the concept is one that hasn’t been done to death, and what’s more, it isn’t a sequel, part of a franchise, or based on so-called true events. It’s got Bousman’s signature style, but in venturing outside his comfort zone and working with a different DP (Michael Fimognari), we get to see a whole new dimension to his visual storytelling prowess.
Abattoir offers a smart story, compelling performances, and a great blend of talent and technique. Definitely worth a look when it’s released.
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Film
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