Review of Abattoir (2016) by Sandra N — 23 Jan 2017

A film packed with interesting ideas that never fully come together, ABATTOIR is nevertheless a compelling - if highly flawed - horror yarn. Boasting a truly unique, fresh premise (which, admittedly, is on the goofy side, but not offensively so), the film is ambitious, and attempts to juggle (with varying degrees of success) many different elements and components.

It can't quite pull it off (ultimately it feels like it's trying to do too much), but it's never boring, and it certainly has a fair share of effective and cool moments. Rare for genre tales of this sort, the two lead characters (a plucky reporter and a hard-boiled cop) are fairly sharp people, both of whom feel like they could be plucked from a noir story rather than a horror one, with each of them being given some rather stylized (but fun) dialogue.

At the end of the day, I applaud the movie's intentions, but I also think another couple of drafts might have streamlined things in ways which might have improved the overall structure and narrative progression.