Purely Joyful Movie!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

"Abattoir" is a film with a promising supernatural story and good cinematography that is wasted by a disconnected screenplay that do not develop the characters and situations well. The original idea of an evil man that buys houses to take the rooms where tragedies happened is an unintelligible mess and hard to be understood by the viewer. The motivation of the snoopy Julia Talben is also confused after learning the truth about Jebediah Crone. She knew her family was murdered and in hell (why?) and she insists in entering the house. There is many lack of explanation along the story and in the end, watching "Abattoir" is a complete waste of time. My vote is one (awful).Title (Brazil): "O Matadouro" ("The Slaughterhouse")

This is the kind of movie that a select type of viewer will really appreciate. At the risk of perhaps not liking it very much, you may indeed be one of few who will love what this movie has to offer.At first I thought the movie was falling quite flat, but I stuck with it because slowly the plot began to unravel and bring up more questions than answers.If you want a film that is willing to do it's own thing, and take it all the way, you will be pleased with Abattoir.

Stylistically, it's all over the place. The female lead is the from the 50's? The male cop who was her boyfriend/fling, still is, who ever cares? There's literally no reason why they should even be in the same universe together. Their acting is one 2-hour class above The Room, and sounds more like someone learning English via a script than it does anything else. The premise is interesting. Someone is buying houses where murders happened, taking out the rooms for some reason, and... you leave the theater knowing that much. The woman's sister is killed by someone (who? some guy). She returns to the scene of the crime (why? no reason)to find out the room is gone. So, she does the next logical thing and finds a bunch of homes where murders happened, and goes to find out if there rooms were stolen too! Shocking to no one, they have been. So, she heads home (why? who cares)to a small town the town folk have been convinced into following a man who has apparently died before and been to hell (why? who knows), has seen many bad things (what thing? who knows), and he wants the town members to help him building this Frankenstein of a haunted house. Why a house? Not explained. Why do the people help him? Also, not really explained. In the end she kills her boyfriend/fling/whatever for pretty much no reason, and then she also dies for pretty much no reason. The bad guy is told to return to his family, who is supposedly in hell for an unknown reason, and he walks down the stairs... presumably to where hell is. That's it. Just be happy you only wasted the time necessary to read this.

I admit to being a fan of Mr.Bousman and I have always found his style interesting from camera angles to getting the most bang for his buck on limited budgets. Abattoir is perhaps one of his most stylish, from the cinematography to the shading. I kept having this feeling it was an X-file eerie, engrossing visceral. If you watch 11/11, The Barrens and this ft his film there is no doubt he has become a true master of horror. I think you should see this film the technical aspects are a real accomplishment. Lynn Shays has become a horror staple but she always delivers memorable performances and does so again with a strange love hate schizo lady that will surely creep you out.