Movie Review: Abominable
Movie Title: Abominable
Genre: Horror. Subgenre: Monster movie
Well this marks the first review I've done since July 8, 2005, I really should get back in the swing of things.
Okay I have to say that I was looking forward to seeing SciFi Pictures movie Abominable. This movie boasts an number of major stars (Lance Henriksen and Jeffrey Combs) and a few more not-major but certainly not B-List or C-List actors.
This marks the second Bigfoot related movie that Mr. Henriksen has been in (see my review of Sasquach) and it is certainly the worst of the two. I really think that Lance did this project because he had a few days to kill, because it is certainly not up to his usual standards.
Okay so the plot is pretty basic, our hero Preston Rogers (played by Matt McCoy) is an injured and mentally disturbed man who is returning to his home six months after a serious mountain climbing accident that claimed the life of his wife and left him paralyzed from the waist down. The night previous to our hero's homecoming something attacked a local farmer's livestock something big. Preston arrives at his home and we have a touching scene where he rolls around in his wheelchair looking at photographs. The takes a moment to make a business call when his handler comes in. Otis (no I'm not kidding) has some "witty" banter with Preston and then is dispatched to get some Soy Milk for our hero (he's allergic to regular milk don't-you-know)
Soon after Otis leaves a gaggle (I think that's the correct term) of young, hot women show up who have (obviously) rented the place right across from our hero's home (Oh did I forget to mention that all this takes place way up in the mountains someplace...oh whoops). Our hero takes in the sights (so-to-speak) but as the girls are unpacking he notices something odd, the phone line is down. I mean literally down. Its been knocked down and is lying on the ground, which is odd seeing as Preston was just using the phone. Hmmmmm.
One of the girls comes out to call her boyfriend and Preston "snoops" on her using a pair of binoculars. While doing this he thinks he sees something in the woods. Thinking its a smudge on the glasses he cleans them up. At this point we watch over his shoulder something come out of the woods, snatch the girl and make off with her with it or her making a sound. Preston comes back up with his freshly cleaned glasses to find that girl is gone, but her cell phone is on the ground.
From here we cut to Ziegler Dane (aka Lance "Yeah I have a few days to kill" Henriksen) his buddy Farmer Hoss (the one who lost the livestock), and "Clerk" (aka Jeffrey "What I don't even get a frickin name?" Combs). There is a lot of "good old-buddy" talk and even an interesting if oddly-placed reference to the Darwin Awards specifically the story of Man Glued to Rhino Buttocks. It seems that Ziegler, Hoss, and Clerk are out here tracking the thing that got Hoss's livestock. Well as you can guess it gets them but not before Ziegler finds the girl that was just snatched.
Back to our hero. At this point he's sure (I think he sees the thing moving around outside) that something is out there stalking the girls so he tries to contact them but is pretty limited because of you-know the wheelchair thing (sadly what I thought was going to be an interesting choice for our hero has proven to just be a fairly lame way to limit what the hero can do to help the people around him). Also the girls mistake him for a "Peeping Tom". Eventually they get concerned about their friend and go looking for her and find the cell phone. Preston has sent a text message "Your friend was taken into the woods. Call the Police" which freaks the girls out but they have already called the police and got the "can't file a missing persons report for 48 hours thing". Now, Preston has also emailed the local police who think he's a crank. Sadly this could have been a nice touch to show that the police here were competent but seeing as this is a monster movie and these are Cops in a monster movie they are pretty useless.
After this point things go from bad to worse. The girls have a fight and one of them gets a drink in the face which prompts her to go take a shower (Woo blurred out nekkedness!)
Oh I forgot to mention that Otis came back at somepoint during all this and has proven that they will apparently let anyone be an orderly or whatever he is as he is fairly useless and thinks that Preston is just as crazy as everyone thinks he is. The good news is that Otis will have brief shining moment later on.
Anyway back to our story. One of the girls is washing up and after Otis gets a free peepshow the girl is snatched through the window of the bathroom folding her in half the bad way. Apparently her friends aren't very smart, or observant because they don't notice all the screaming, breaking glass, or roaring...
Otis tries to sedate Preston, but Preston gets the drop on him using the sedative on Otis knocking him out, after this Preston gets a nasty surprise as the Creature is looking in through his window right at Preston! Preston does a very manly yelp, falls backwards and is knocked unconscious.
Later he wakes up (I'm guessing its only been about 30 minutes our so) and the girls are looking for their friend. One of them goes out and looks in the open window to see the mess on the bathroom floor. Panic ensues.
After this point there is a lot of screaming, and a lot of dying. One of the girls manages to make it over to Preston's place where they start to setup a trap for the creature. Things don't go according to plan and they have to make a break for it. Using Preston's old climbing gear (yeah I should have seen that coming) they tie a rope off and climb down from his porch (its fairly high up). The creature comes in and menaces the girl a bit and then Otis wakes up grabs the axe that was going to be part of the trap and gives the creature a whack. The creature is distracted by having to eat Otis's face off and then goes back to the girl. She manages to get away and the couple escape to Otis's car.
The rest of the film at this point is pretty typical of the genre although they do manage to avoid the stupidity of a "Hero Death Battle Exemption" that is common in these kinds of films.
The end of the movie has some interesting stuff to it, although its just interesting enough to be really annoying. The police finally show up and take our couple to safety. However a deputy shows up and says that they can't find any of the bodies (5 dead people, 1 dead creature), so they go to investigate. They find the car that the hero used to kill the beast (actually was not a bad scene) but there is no creature. After some knee-jerk machoness by the Sheriff they start to hear growling in the woods and they turn to find a large shadow above the trees (taller than our previous creature) and there are about two dozen of them...
(So endith the movie)
This movie is pretty average for what SciFi puts out, which is a disappointment. I would have thought with the two headliners that this would have been a better film. Put this film has all the classic Horror film devices: IITS, Offscreen Teleportation, POV Shots, and The Stealth Monster Rule. Now granted some of this stuff is to help capture what makes something like Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti interesting but even still a lot of this stuff was a bit overdone.
My biggest problem with this film is fairly simple: Why?
Why is this thing stalking and killing people and animals? Are they so overpopulated that their normal food supply of woodland creatures has dried up? Its mentioned that there have been sitings of these creatures in the area before. With the amount that are present at the end, and their new dietary habits, wouldn't someone have seen them? Wouldn't the police be taking things like this more seriously as a couple of Draft Horses were killed and mutilated (and the bodies left there) just the previous day. Even if they don't believe its a man-creature like Bigfoot it could be a bear.
*sigh* Sadly most of these questions get left by the wayside because well...they don't further the action of the plot. Hollywood reasons that the audience doesn't care why they just want to see a monster stomping around.
Which is why movies like this still are made.
Most Memorable Moment: Otis getting his face bitten off.
Coolest Quote: "Hey Ass-Monkey..." (Otis's final words)
Overall Rating: D
Genre: Horror. Subgenre: Monster movie
Well this marks the first review I've done since July 8, 2005, I really should get back in the swing of things.
Okay I have to say that I was looking forward to seeing SciFi Pictures movie Abominable. This movie boasts an number of major stars (Lance Henriksen and Jeffrey Combs) and a few more not-major but certainly not B-List or C-List actors.
This marks the second Bigfoot related movie that Mr. Henriksen has been in (see my review of Sasquach) and it is certainly the worst of the two. I really think that Lance did this project because he had a few days to kill, because it is certainly not up to his usual standards.
Okay so the plot is pretty basic, our hero Preston Rogers (played by Matt McCoy) is an injured and mentally disturbed man who is returning to his home six months after a serious mountain climbing accident that claimed the life of his wife and left him paralyzed from the waist down. The night previous to our hero's homecoming something attacked a local farmer's livestock something big. Preston arrives at his home and we have a touching scene where he rolls around in his wheelchair looking at photographs. The takes a moment to make a business call when his handler comes in. Otis (no I'm not kidding) has some "witty" banter with Preston and then is dispatched to get some Soy Milk for our hero (he's allergic to regular milk don't-you-know)
Soon after Otis leaves a gaggle (I think that's the correct term) of young, hot women show up who have (obviously) rented the place right across from our hero's home (Oh did I forget to mention that all this takes place way up in the mountains someplace...oh whoops). Our hero takes in the sights (so-to-speak) but as the girls are unpacking he notices something odd, the phone line is down. I mean literally down. Its been knocked down and is lying on the ground, which is odd seeing as Preston was just using the phone. Hmmmmm.
One of the girls comes out to call her boyfriend and Preston "snoops" on her using a pair of binoculars. While doing this he thinks he sees something in the woods. Thinking its a smudge on the glasses he cleans them up. At this point we watch over his shoulder something come out of the woods, snatch the girl and make off with her with it or her making a sound. Preston comes back up with his freshly cleaned glasses to find that girl is gone, but her cell phone is on the ground.
From here we cut to Ziegler Dane (aka Lance "Yeah I have a few days to kill" Henriksen) his buddy Farmer Hoss (the one who lost the livestock), and "Clerk" (aka Jeffrey "What I don't even get a frickin name?" Combs). There is a lot of "good old-buddy" talk and even an interesting if oddly-placed reference to the Darwin Awards specifically the story of Man Glued to Rhino Buttocks. It seems that Ziegler, Hoss, and Clerk are out here tracking the thing that got Hoss's livestock. Well as you can guess it gets them but not before Ziegler finds the girl that was just snatched.
Back to our hero. At this point he's sure (I think he sees the thing moving around outside) that something is out there stalking the girls so he tries to contact them but is pretty limited because of you-know the wheelchair thing (sadly what I thought was going to be an interesting choice for our hero has proven to just be a fairly lame way to limit what the hero can do to help the people around him). Also the girls mistake him for a "Peeping Tom". Eventually they get concerned about their friend and go looking for her and find the cell phone. Preston has sent a text message "Your friend was taken into the woods. Call the Police" which freaks the girls out but they have already called the police and got the "can't file a missing persons report for 48 hours thing". Now, Preston has also emailed the local police who think he's a crank. Sadly this could have been a nice touch to show that the police here were competent but seeing as this is a monster movie and these are Cops in a monster movie they are pretty useless.
After this point things go from bad to worse. The girls have a fight and one of them gets a drink in the face which prompts her to go take a shower (Woo blurred out nekkedness!)
Oh I forgot to mention that Otis came back at somepoint during all this and has proven that they will apparently let anyone be an orderly or whatever he is as he is fairly useless and thinks that Preston is just as crazy as everyone thinks he is. The good news is that Otis will have brief shining moment later on.
Anyway back to our story. One of the girls is washing up and after Otis gets a free peepshow the girl is snatched through the window of the bathroom folding her in half the bad way. Apparently her friends aren't very smart, or observant because they don't notice all the screaming, breaking glass, or roaring...
Otis tries to sedate Preston, but Preston gets the drop on him using the sedative on Otis knocking him out, after this Preston gets a nasty surprise as the Creature is looking in through his window right at Preston! Preston does a very manly yelp, falls backwards and is knocked unconscious.
Later he wakes up (I'm guessing its only been about 30 minutes our so) and the girls are looking for their friend. One of them goes out and looks in the open window to see the mess on the bathroom floor. Panic ensues.
After this point there is a lot of screaming, and a lot of dying. One of the girls manages to make it over to Preston's place where they start to setup a trap for the creature. Things don't go according to plan and they have to make a break for it. Using Preston's old climbing gear (yeah I should have seen that coming) they tie a rope off and climb down from his porch (its fairly high up). The creature comes in and menaces the girl a bit and then Otis wakes up grabs the axe that was going to be part of the trap and gives the creature a whack. The creature is distracted by having to eat Otis's face off and then goes back to the girl. She manages to get away and the couple escape to Otis's car.
The rest of the film at this point is pretty typical of the genre although they do manage to avoid the stupidity of a "Hero Death Battle Exemption" that is common in these kinds of films.
The end of the movie has some interesting stuff to it, although its just interesting enough to be really annoying. The police finally show up and take our couple to safety. However a deputy shows up and says that they can't find any of the bodies (5 dead people, 1 dead creature), so they go to investigate. They find the car that the hero used to kill the beast (actually was not a bad scene) but there is no creature. After some knee-jerk machoness by the Sheriff they start to hear growling in the woods and they turn to find a large shadow above the trees (taller than our previous creature) and there are about two dozen of them...
(So endith the movie)
This movie is pretty average for what SciFi puts out, which is a disappointment. I would have thought with the two headliners that this would have been a better film. Put this film has all the classic Horror film devices: IITS, Offscreen Teleportation, POV Shots, and The Stealth Monster Rule. Now granted some of this stuff is to help capture what makes something like Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti interesting but even still a lot of this stuff was a bit overdone.
My biggest problem with this film is fairly simple: Why?
Why is this thing stalking and killing people and animals? Are they so overpopulated that their normal food supply of woodland creatures has dried up? Its mentioned that there have been sitings of these creatures in the area before. With the amount that are present at the end, and their new dietary habits, wouldn't someone have seen them? Wouldn't the police be taking things like this more seriously as a couple of Draft Horses were killed and mutilated (and the bodies left there) just the previous day. Even if they don't believe its a man-creature like Bigfoot it could be a bear.
*sigh* Sadly most of these questions get left by the wayside because well...they don't further the action of the plot. Hollywood reasons that the audience doesn't care why they just want to see a monster stomping around.
Which is why movies like this still are made.
Most Memorable Moment: Otis getting his face bitten off.
Coolest Quote: "Hey Ass-Monkey..." (Otis's final words)
Overall Rating: D