Abominable (2006)

★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7 out of 10 stars)

Director: Ryan Schifrin
Producer: Ryan Schifrin, Jordan Barker, Rafael Primorac
Starring: Matt McCoy, Haley Joel, Christien Tinsley, Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs

“There’s something out there.”

The Review:

Let me set your expectations gently, as a host ushering guests into a familiar parlor rather than a strange new crypt.

This is not a deeply satisfying feast of horror atmosphere. It does not haunt the corners of your imagination long after the lamps go dark. What it is, instead, is a respectful nod — a bow, if you will — to a great many things this genre holds dear. And there is a certain charm in that gesture, provided you come to it in the proper spirit.

Consider the company assembled here. This is an ensemble of accomplished performers and beloved horror staples, faces the seasoned viewer will recognize with a knowing smile. They lend the proceedings a weight the material, on its own, might not have earned. Everyone commits. No one phones it in from the shadows.

The setting, too, deserves a mention. The film plants itself in the small-town dread of Flatwoods, West Virginia, and it wears that regional folk-horror lineage with evident affection. There is a loyalty here to practical effects — real texture, real presence — that I confess warms my old heart. In an age enamored of the weightless and the digital, a creature you can nearly reach out and touch is a rare pleasure.

Now, I would not dismiss this as a simple monster movie, because it leans so heavily into recognizable slasher tropes that the distinction begins to blur. Let me put it plainly. Were the monster Jason instead of a hairy cryptid, the picture would have unfolded in very much the same fashion. The rhythms, the stalking, the whittling-down of the cast — all familiar steps in a well-worn dance.

And here is a delight I did not expect. The film pulls off a rather comfortable Rear Window or Body Double vibe — a voyeurism subplot in which our watcher sees what no one will believe, trapped and helpless behind glass. It is a clever borrowing, and it works.

Not everything holds together. The pacing grows a touch jerky toward the end, stumbling where it ought to have glided. But I will grant it this: there is a genuine payoff, a moment where you get to see the monster in full. That reveal is worth the patience. It is well acted throughout, though I must be honest and admit no new ground is forged. This is a film that honors its ancestors rather than defying them.

Did I enjoy it? Oh yes, my connoisseurs of the carnivorous and the cryptid.

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Yes child, there is more…so much more. See what you have missed: T. Glenn Bane’s 52 Weeks of Halloween Index.