I Love Horror – A horror blog devoted to the critical, analytical, and cynical assessment of the horror industry and horror films.

abominable

Director: Ryan Schifirin
Year: 2006
Country: USA

“So bad it’s good” is a common phrase when dealing with made-for-TV horror and science fiction films. It’s clear these films won’t be the next Citizen Kane, but merely fodder for insomnia or a rousing rendition of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and that’s all we should come to expect from any movie that features giant, mutated, or otherwise unexplainable creatures. At first glance one might think that Abominable, the SyFy née Sci-Fi Channel original film released in 2006 under the auspices of the Devil would be such a film, but really, you’d be wrong. Instead, it’s so bad it goes right past good, waves goodbye to mildly entertaining, and ends up in some tangent universe where darkness and the Wilhelm Scream consume all light.

Abominable operates on the Rear Window formula, a fitting vehicle for an actor who considers James Stewart to be his biggest inspiration. If Mr. Stewart could hear that he’d be spinning in his grave. Matt McCoy plays Preston Rogers, a parapalegic returning to the house he and his wife shared before she plunged to her death from the aptly titled Suicide Rock. Under the care of his abrasive and porn-stache sportin’ physical therapist Otis, Preston is faced with the daunting task of  naviagting a house without a wheelchair ramp. When one of the girls vacationing next door goes missing, he believes someone…or something took her DUN DUN DUN! His fears soon manifest themselves in the form of an abominable snowman, or yeti, or sasquatch, which looked like the combination of Grimace and Deadite Ed from Evil Dead 2 after a month-long bender of whiskey and crystal meth with nary a razor in sight. Let’s call him Harry for the sake of clarity.

Bad acting is a requisite for B-movies, yet this takes it to another level unseen without the aid of a telescope. Matt McCoy is dreadful in every scene, uttering every line as if he’s just bored or simply aware that he’s in a movie called Abominable. Preston’s caretaker Otis, played by Academy Award-winning make-up artist Christien Tinsley, was hysterically bad, proudly displaying his ginger stache as if it were the source of his unintentionally comedic acting abilities, though I gotta give him mad props for the line “Hey ass monkey! Eat this!” just before having his head eaten by Harry. The rest of the primary cast was made up of a bunch of girls who simply served as Harry fodder and two veteran actors, Paul Gleason and Lance Henrikson, the former of which died the year this movie was released. Coincidence?

While I’m aware the filmmakers were working within the confines of a miniscule budget, the movie could have been saved by copious amounts of blood and a chorus line outro, but sadly neither were to be found between Harry and the ridiculous horn-heavy and cliched score. It’s sole redeeming quality that wasn’t boobs or laughably oversized e-mail text was the ending, which found me laughing out loud over just how absolutely fucked those cops are going to be once the credits role.

Abominable was just a bad movie, yet absolutely perfect for a gathering of friends who just want to get drunk and yell at the screen. When Mr. Hall of Horror’s Not Dead recommended it to me as a cure for my horror movie rut (see his antithetical review here), I believed him. I don’t know why he would want to hurt me like that. Why Peter, WHY!?!?!?! I’m gonna go cry now.