Abominable (2006)

When it comes to horror movies about Bigfoot, you're hard-pressed to find any that are quality. You've got the laughable The Legend of Boggy Creek and Night of the Demon (which is so ridiculous that it's actually kind of enjoyable) as well as a couple of bad Sci-Fi Channel original movies. There's a nice Hammer film about the yeti called The Abominable Snowman but few know about it. The best movie to involve Bigfoot by far is Harry and the Hendersons and that's not a horror film. But then along comes Abominable in 2006, a little independent horror film that was another Sci-Fi Channel original but manages to be much better than most of the unwatchable junk that channel puts out. I first heard about this movie from the awesome YouTube user "ramboraph" (if you love horror and action movies from 70's to the 2000's, he's your guy). I think he said it was one of his favorite horror films of the 2000's and the plot sounded more well done than the average Sci-Fi Channel original. I got the DVD in the summer of 2009 and I rather enjoyed the film. It may not be perfect but it's the closest thing to a well-made horror film about Bigfoot that you're going to get.

Opening with a farmer and his wife cowering in their home from a monstrous creature that has killed one of their horses, the film's plot really begins with Preston Rogers, a former mountain climber who suffered a terrible climbing accident that killed his wife and left him crippled and confined to a wheelchair. His doctor believes it would do him good to return to the home he once shared with his wife in the mountains and despite Preston's own reservations, he's taken there and looked after by a male nurse. At the same time, a group of teenage girls arrive and stay in the cabin across from his. When darkness falls, strange things begin to happen: one of the girls goes missing, something tears the phone lines down, and Preston sees a large figure stalking the cabins from the darkness. Soon, he and the other girls are attacked by the creature, which turns out to be a flesh-eating Sasquatch and Preston must overcome his disability to save himself and the last surviving girl.

The film was written and directed by Ryan Schifrin, who unfortunately has only done short films since this movie so far and not another feature. He may not be the best director ever but he takes the concept of Bigfoot as the villain in a horror film and does something with it. This is basically Rear Window with a Bigfoot and as dumb as that sounds, Schifrin manages to pull it off respectively well. Another thing I commend him on is using practical suit-work to bring the Bigfoot monster to life. I didn't see any CGI at all in this film and if there was, it was done very well.

For me, the best part about this movie is Matt McCoy as the lead character, Preston Rogers. McCoy is a good actor who has a resume that includes dozens of movie and TV roles and he brings a real likability to Preston. He doesn't want to go back to his old home but is forced to and when he gets there, you can tell that it's tormenting him to be there. He even seems to contemplate suicide at one moment when he takes some pills out of a bottle but eventually decides not to. He's a good person who becomes concerned about the bizarre stuff going on outside and around the cabins and when he realizes there is indeed a monster out there, he does everything he can to save not only himself but the girls in the other cabin. I like the story he tells to the last surviving girl, Amanda, about how he didn't want to live anymore after his wife died but now with the Bigfoot threatening to kill him, he's determined not to die and waste the gift of life he was given when he survived. He's also funny as well. He often takes to himself, which is really hard for someone to do convincingly but I like how at one point when he's trying to convince himself he's not crazy, he says, "No shit, you're talking to yourself." I also like a moment where he tries to go out the front door but when he sees the flight of stairs, he says, "Fuck that," knowing he'd probably kill himself trying to get down there in his wheelchair. He also hilariously flips his jerky male nurse off behind his back when he doesn't believe what he's trying to tell him. McCoy does his best and, in my opinion, he succeeds in making Preston a likable, vulnerable, and charming character.

Unfortunately for Preston, he's stuck with a real douchebag of a male nurse, Otis Wilhelm, played by Christien Tinsley, who's actually the effects guy. From the beginning, Otis acts like a complete ass towards Preston. He patronizes him, leaves him alone for hours at one point (he says he had a hard time finding the soy milk that Preston needs but you kind of doubt that), and refuses to listen to him. Granted, Preston is talking about a monster but Otis is such a douche towards him that it's unbelievable. It's hinted at that he's such a jerk because he resents Preston's wealth and from the first scene with him, tells Preston that he's calling the shots and that they can do it the easy way or the hard way. Preston finally is forced to use a sedative that Otis planned to use on him to knock him out. Otis does manage to somewhat redeem himself near the end by attacking the Bigfoot in the back with an axe but is immediately killed. I always hate it when jerky characters manage to redeem themselves and are then killed. It just bugs me and I kind of wish Otis had lived since he now knew that Preston wasn't crazy. Ah, whatever.

As for the teenage girls, there's really not much to say. Amanda (Haley Joel) is the only one who survives along with Preston. She seems nice and decent and does sympathize with Preston when he tells her the story about the death of his wife but other than that, not much to say. The most memorable one to me is independent horror queen Tiffany Shepis (who I've many times and is a lot of fun to be around) as Tracy, mainly because she has one of the most memorable deaths in the film, with the Bigfoot smashing through a window and pulling her through, causing her to fold in half... and we see her naked in the shower. That's always distinctive. Ashley Hartman as Karen Herdburger (Herdburger, really?) is memorable because she's the one who doesn't want to be up in the mountains and spends most of the time talking with her boyfriend on her cellphone. She's also the first one to be attacked and killed by the Bigfoot. All I can say about C.J. (Karin Anna Cheung) is that she initially thinks Preston is a peeping tom and she has argument with Tracy and throws a drink in her face. As for the last girl, Michelle (Natalie Compagno), I didn't even know her name until I read it on a credits list on IMDB. Bottom line, those girls could have been developed much better.

There are plenty of familiar faces in this film, some of which are used better than others. Dee Wallace Stone appears in the opening scene as the wife of the farmer, Hoss (Rex Linn). Nothing to say about her other than she does what you'd expect her to do: scream hysterically. Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs has a memorable role as a gas station clerk who smokes even though he's on an oxygen tank. It's a shame that Combs isn't a bigger actor than he is because when you compare with this with the role of Herbert West, you can see his ability to play many different characters. He's quite funny in the campfire scene with Linn and Lance Henriksen when he says, "There are some things better left unfound" and Henriksen says, "This coming from a guy who chain-smokes at his gas station and hooked up to an oxygen tank." Combs then says, "Thank you for the reminder, I believe I will," and lights up. Henriksen says, "Your lungs must look like a couple of old saddlebags." Combs' response? "Well, giddyup!" So cool. Speaking of Lance Henriksen, he's great (as he always is) in his brief role as Ziegler, the guy who doesn't necessarily believe in the monster but he's out there looking for it because he says, "I like to kill shit." It's a shame he and Combs are killed off so quickly because I would have liked to have seen them in the climax. Also, what is it with him and movies about Bigfoot? This is one of several Bigfoot movies that he appeared in around that time. Finally, there's Paul Gleason as Sheriff Halderman. He plays a nice, sarcastic, hard-ass sheriff who doesn't believe for one minute that there's a Bigfoot around and at the end when he and his men are investigating the woods, he calls his men a bunch of wimps for being so scared... that is until his men come face to a large group of the monsters! Sadly, Gleason died not long after filming this movie, which is a shame.

Like I said, I commend Ryan Schifrin to go with the good old technique of a man in a suit to bring the Bigfoot to life. This Bigfoot manages to be quite menacing. It's tall, ugly, and very ferocious, ripping people's throats out, slashing them apart, eating livestock, and the like. It also makes very threatening roars and growls. If there's one problem I have with the monster, it's the face. I know they had to make the monster ugly for it to be scary but something about its face, as well done in the execution of its movements as it is, looks... off. I can't explain it but I thought the face could have been designed better. However, the makeup effects for the gruesome deaths are flawless. Like I said, there's some throat-ripping, a dead horse, and Tiffany Shepis getting folded in half. But the best death by far is the Otis'. After putting an axe in the Bigfoot's back, it grabs him, lifts him up, and bites his entire face off! There's a nicely done gory shot of the head after the face has been bitten off and it's a great effect. The way the Bigfoot is "killed" at the end is nicely done as well. With the axe still sticking out of its back, Preston rams it up against a tree with his car and keeps revving the engine until the axe goes completely through the Bigfoot's back and out its chest. Not the most spectacular way to kill the monster but well done just the same.

There are some things about this movie that do make me cringe though. There are times where it's blatantly obvious that this was meant for cable TV. I hate the way the title comes up and looks as well as the opening credits. That just screams made for Sci-Fi and I hate that because it looks so cheap. Some of the camera movements, especially one where the Bigfoot breaks into the girls' cabin and the camera pans from the top floor to the bottom, also look bad. The very look of the film screams independent movie made for TV. I fact, it looks very similar to Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers which, although not produced for, did premier on the Sci-Fi Channel. I know I shouldn't be so harsh but that stuff really distracts me because it reminds that this is made-for-TV and I'm just watching the gory uncensored cut. I can't help but cringe because that lumps it in with the junk the channel has produced and this is much better than 98% of the channel's original movies.. Also, there's a big continuity error or at least it is to me. Preston takes Otis' car keys when he and Amanda are planning to escape from the house. When they finally do get to the car, Preston no longer has the keys. Maybe I missed him dropping them or whatever but I just thought, "I thought he got the keys." I guess we're meant to assume they fell out of his pocket when he slid down the rope to get to the ground but I'm not sure.

As for the music score by Ryan Schifrin's father Lalo... I'm not sure. It doesn't sound awful and Schifrin has done almost 200 music scores by this point so he's obviously a sought-after composer but this sounds run-of-the-mill and generic to me. The main theme is done well but it's nothing special to me. the music for action and suspense scenes is done much better. I do like how the music over the ending credits slowly fades out and we're left with the sounds of the forest, with the Bigfoot growling at the very end. All in all, not a terrible score but nothing special either.

Abominable is far from perfect. There are moments where you can tell it's a cheap, independent movie made for the Sci-Fi Channel, some of the characters are undeveloped, the music is so-so, and it's another movie that shamelessly suckers in genre fans by claiming to star well known genre actors who are really only in one or two scenes. But this movie still does other things right that most of the original movies from the Sci-Fi Channel screw up. For one, it uses practical creature and makeup effects very well, it has a likable lead, and its odd premise is pulled off rather successfully. Like I said, this is about the best you can get when it comes to a horror movie with Bigfoot. I'd say check it out at least once if you're in the mood for a nice creature feature. Now, if only someone could make a decent horror movie about the Loch Ness monster and we'd be all set.