Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Crappy film

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

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Abominable (2006) ** (out of 4)A crippled man returns to his home in the mountains six months after he and his wife were attacked by what they claim to have been Bigfoot. The house next to his is being rented by five young ladies looking for a fun weekend but soon all of them are under attack by the mythical creature.Bigfoot is my favorite monster whether its reading about him, watching television specials or watching him in movies. The bad thing about being a Bigfoot fan is that the majority of the movies that have been made about him are awful. In fact, you'd really be hard pressed to find very many good ones, which is a real shame. Ryan Schifrin's ABOMINABLE isn't the greatest movie on the subject and it's not the worse so it's pretty much in the middle.The film is basically a slasher movie but the killer is Bigfoot. I say that because there's really not too much that happens outside of victims being set up to be killed. If you're a fan of gore then you'll be happy to know that there's plenty of that here including people being ripped apart and worse. The film does benefit from the gore and I'd argue that, for the most part, the Bigfoot looks good too.Several familiar faces show up throughout the running time including fan favorites Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Rex Linn and Dee Wallace-Stone. Seeing the familiar faces is another major plus that the film has going for it. For the most part ABOMINABLE is an entertaining movie but at the same time the characters are all rather bland and boring and I'd also argue that there's no suspense and that's something that could have helped to rise this above your average fair.

It seems like writer/director Ryan Shifrin put a lot of time and energy into lobbying and trying to convince famous B-movie icons to make guest appearances in his long-feature debut film. And with great success, I must add, since "Abominable" features no less than 4 relatively big and popular names of the horror/cult movie business. It must be quite impressive to sit in a bar with your friends and be able to say that you managed to recruit Jeffrey Combs, Lance Henriksen, Paul Gleason and Dee Wallace Stone for your first film! But does it honestly matter that much, really? The roles of these four hardly qualify as cameo appearances and their added value to the plot is zilch. Instead of focusing so much on these guest appearances, Shifrin perhaps should have put even a bit more thought in the script and main character drawings. The story definitely shows potential and more depth than your average Bigfoot/Sasquatch flick (traditionally a sub genre full of hideous stinkers…), but eventually it still lacks something. The story centers on a man returning to his cabin in the Flatwoods, severely traumatized and condemned to life in a wheelchair following a terrible mountain climbing accident in which he lost his beloved wife. Quite a shame, because according to Jeffrey Combs' sleazy character she was a fox! He rapidly spots a giant hairy monster with spooky eyes amidst the trees, but his cynical male nurse doesn't believe him and the four sexy babes next door assume he's just a sick pervert when he's waving around his binoculars and trying to get their attention. Yes, "Abominable" is actually a bit of a mixture between Hitchcock's classic "Read Window" and low-budget budget backwoods horror. Three of the four babes (including Tiffany Shepis, so nudity guaranteed!) are butchered rather fast, but our crippled whiny hero teams up with the – cutest- remaining girl and makes a run for it. The plot is silly and predictable, but at least it's never boring and there even are a few notable moments of suspense if you keep your expectations low. The Bigfoot creature looks like a sleazier and trashier version of Harry (from "Harry and the Hendersons") and has the ability to swallow someone's entire face in one single gulp! Speaking as an avid blood & gore fanatic, I think "Abominable" should have shown a lot more beastly massacres and grotesque make-up effects. Maybe next time Shifrin could try to spend less of his budget on cameo appearances and more in the gore department.

In fact, I was actually surprised at how surprisingly decent Abominable was. Okay, it is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, the special effects are on the cheesy side and that is including the Bigfoot(I think) monster, the pacing does have its longueurs in the middle and I do think the monster could have been utilised a little bit less than it was as well as developed more to add to the suspense factor. However, the photography is not bad considering the small budget, the moody look of it does draw you in, and I'd say the same for the scenery as well. The sound effects don't make the mistake of being bizarre or misplaced either. The scripting does have its weak spots but there is enough humour and suspense to make it a decent script at least, while the story is gripping in how scarily gripping it is, the suspenseful atmosphere and the increasingly violent killings. The characters are ones we've seen before and can be seen as clichés, but the actors ensure that there is some depth and likability to them. Matt McCoy does a quite good job carrying Abominable, and Haley Joel is much more than the all looks, no talent actress I was anticipating(and dreading). Then there are the likes of Paul Gleason, Jeffrey Combs and Lance Henrikssen who are always watchable in varying movies, and they are all very good in their roles. So overall, decent, not abominable in the slightest. 7/10 Bethany Cox

First time director Ryan Schifrin also wrote this direct-to-Scy-Fy monster movie about a paraplegic confined to a cabin in the mountains. He witnesses a monster attacking a young girl in the cabin next door and decides to get involved. Schifrin managed to get Jeffrey Combs, Paul Gleason, and Lance Henriksen to star in this low budget melding of Rear Window with a generic monster movie in the woods. Henriksen and Combs are just plain awesome, though they're not in it long enough, and the leads are not nearly as strong. Truly, as Scy-Fy creature-features go, this one is a bit above the standard dreck, but it's still lacking quite a bit. The monster fx are pretty bad and most of the script is a bit difficult to wade through, but there is some decent gore and a few laughs to be had. From what I've heard, most of the Scy-Fy films are utter garbage, and this one is perhaps a healthy step above that,