For many horror fans, no decade did it better than the 1980s. Sure, that was the slasher heyday, but there was so much more going on as well, from monster movies to wild body horror films. Two decades later, in 2006, three ’80s horror legends reunited for writer and director Ryan Schifrin‘s Abominable. Among the cast are Dee Wallace (The Howling), Lance Henriksen (Pumpkinhead), and Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), but it’s Matt McCoy who is the true star in this fright fest that’s part Rear Window and part monster movie, because the title is in reference to a killer sasquatch. Yep, Abominable is a Bigfoot movie, but don’t roll your eyes just yet. Although Abominable is campy, it’s also terrifying, with a fun story, and a creepy-looking beast you won’t soon forget.
What Is ‘Abominable’ About?
Abominable shows that it’s going for the scares and not holding anything back right from the beginning, when we meet Dee Wallace and Rex Linn as a husband and wife living in the country. Late at night, they are woken up by strange sounds coming from the dark woods. We hear growls, trees shake, and a massive silhouette emerges. The couple retreats to their home and the suspense builds as the creature comes closer. Will they make it through the night?
The central focus of Abominable, however, is Matt McCoy as Preston Rogers, a man in a wheelchair who can’t move his legs, and who is now going on a retreat to a cabin in the woods in an attempt to escape the tragedy of his personal life that left him paralyzed. Nothing bad ever happens at a cabin in the woods in horror movies, right? In an ode to Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rear Window, McCoy takes on the Jimmy Stewart role when in the cabin next door the obligatory group of young, beautiful women show up. They’re here for a bachelorette party, and Preston, bored and alone, watches them through binoculars from his deck. It’s then that it happens, as one of the women is pulled into the trees by something large and covered in fur. Now it’s up to Preston to get the other women to believe what he saw and save the day.
Matt McCoy’s Performance Balances the Wild Plot
So many Bigfoot movies are an abomination, if you’ll pardon the obvious pun. There are a plethora of direct-to-video movies out there of the “so bad they’re good” variety. We watch them for the same reason we might watch a movie like Velocipastor; to laugh at the horrible acting, the over-the-top plot, and the god awful effects. That’s not Abominable. It has a few lighter moments, but for the most part it’s deadly serious and really tries.
Lance Henriksen and Jeffrey Combs are here in small roles as a couple of friends out in the black forest hunting Bigfoot, and while they have fun cameos, Abominable‘s success lies with Matt McCoy. He’s not a big horror name like them, but you’ll definitely know his face. We see much of the film through his perspective, which means everything can quickly go off the rails depending on how he reacts. McCoy plays Preston Rogers as more of a quiet man, buried in his trauma, not the over-the-top harbinger of doom who screams and panics. He’s scared, and he’s brave, but he’s a low-key regular guy and not an action hero. Even though he’s our pathway into the story, Abominable isn’t all about him. His limitations help increase the tension, because he can’t just go running across the way to knock on the girls’ door and warn them, but it’s the big bad Bigfoot that you came here for.
‘Abominable’ Isn’t Afraid To Show Its Monster
Creature features often go one of two ways. The bad ones immediately show us their horribly put-together monster, immediately removing all sense of dread. Others hide the monster in the dark, scaring the audience through sounds and preying on our imaginations. In Willow Creek and Exists, two found footage Bigfoot movies, we either never see the monster or it’s not revealed until the end. Abominable goes for more. For the first half of the movie, we see the creature in the shadows, get a peek at its eyes, or a hairy arm when it smashes through a window, but the full monster isn’t shown.
This isn’t the result of a B-movie that’s afraid to show what it came up with though. When we do finally see Bigfoot in Abominable, it’s terrifying. You don’t have to worry about bad makeup or CGI here, because Abominable delivers with a freaky costume for its monster actor. The Abominable sasquatch is all practical effects, a larger-than-life force with huge teeth and a bad attitude who only wants to kill. Harry and the Hendersons this is not. Abominable leans into full-on monster territory with no sympathetic qualities. If it finds you, you’re dead, and that’s that. The first two acts are all about buildup, but the last half hour is pure bloody mayhem that’s sick of holding back. Turn the lights off, sit back, and enjoy the carnage!
Abominable
- Release Date
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April 10, 2006
- Runtime
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94 minutes
- Director
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Ryan Schifrin
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Matt McCoy
Preston Rogers
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Christien Tinsley
Otis Wilhelm
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