ABRUPTIO (2023)
Label: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating:
Duration: 95 Minutes 1 Second
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen(1.78:1)
Director: Evan Marlowe
Cast: James Marsters, Christopher McDonald, Hana Mae Lee, Robert Englund, Jordan Peele, Sid Haig, Rich Fulcher, Patrick Cavanaugh, Alice L. Walker, Evan Marlowe, Darren Darnborough, Sohm Kapila
In the indie mind-bender Abruptio (2023) sad sack Les Hackel (James Marsters, TV's Buffy The Vampire Slayer) lives with his nagging mother Doreen (Carole Ruggier, TV's Agent Carter), he hates his dead-end job and has been wallowing in self-pity ever since he was recently dumped by his girlfriend Allison (Kerry Finlayson, The Impact). His life is forever changed though when his friend Danny (Jordan Peele, the director of Get Out) tells him that he has discovered an incision on his neck, and he tells Les that he should check his neck for one, too, and sure enough he has a small incision that's been stitched-up. Danny tells him that someone has planted a bomb in their necks, and soon they start receiving text messages on their cellphones telling them to do things, and if they do not carry out these tasks in implicitly the bomb in their necks will go off. It turns out that Danny's first mission is to kill Les, and when he proves unwilling to do so the bomb goes off, and his head pops right off after a small but bloody explosion, to the shock and horror of Les.
Now that Les has seen what happens when you don't do what you're told when he gets the text to kill everyone at his dead-end office job with poison gas he does it without question, and maybe a little bit of satisfaction as well. The instructions via text keep coming and Les find himself partnered up with a series of oddball characters, including a old-codger stand-up comic with gross stained teeth Saul (the Sid Haig, The Devil's Rejects), the pair are tasked with killing a family, and then he's next teamed-up with cracked-accountant named Mr. Salk (Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street), to dispose of a pile of bodies at a warehouse by feeding them into into a giant fan-blade pulp machine, then filling 50-gallon drums with the human slurry. He eventually meets a student named Chelsea (Hana Mae Lee, The Babysitter) who has not been implanted, and they bond, and together they attempt to navigate this weird, violent new world, but things could change at any moment, because Les has already proven that he will do just about anything to stay alive, and what's to happen if the next text says to take her out?
As he sets about performing his gruesome tasks the world around him is also falling apart, the mass violence is everywhere, leading him and us a viewers to as who or what have implanted these bombs in people's necks and to what end? The answers do come, but the journey getting to those answers is a freakin' trip, one fraught with gore galore, uneasy scenarios, inhumane choices and also a surprisingly effective story about personal responsibility.
Now something that makes this flick quite a bit different aside from the interesting premise is that it's not acted out with live actors, the decision was made early on by the directors to use hyper-realistic, life-sized puppets instead of human actors. It's uncanny and off-putting these life size puppets, with their dead eyes and funky skin - it made me rather uneasy at times, which feeds perfectly into the story itself. The faces and mannerism of the puppets are seemingly fixed and not very expressionistic, though there does seem to be some CGI involved when it comes to blinking and the movement of mouths, but it seemed very minimal to me. The gore and violence is off the charts, we get decapitating micro-explosions, geysers of blood, dismemberment, and their sense of dread and What-The-Fuckery throughout was rather fascinating. It's just a wild and very dark and weird head-trip, this slice of existential 'we're all puppets' horror had me asking 'what the fuck is happening here?' throughout, by the time the mind-bending conclusion was upon me my hair was kind of blown back how it all resolved, and how it resonated. Also, I loved the late Sig Haig's performance as the wise-cracking old-codger comic Sal, I do believe this might have been his last performance, and we get some behind-the-scenes video of him doing his voice dubbing in the featurette in the extras, which I appreciated.
Audio/Video: Abruptio (2023) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Anchor Bay Entertainment in 1080p HD, framed in 1.78:1 widescreen. It's a appeasing looking affair with good color, solid blacks, clarity and depth are adequate, with a fair amount of texture and detail in the close-ups. Audio comes by way of English Dolby Digital 5.1, lossy audio only, as with the other two recent Anchor Bay releases. It sounds fine, the sound design, dubbed dialogue and score are clean and well-balanced.
Extras include an Audio Commentary with writer/director Evan Marlowe and producer Kerry Marlowe; plus a second Audio Commentary with puppeteer Danny Montooth. We also get a 5-min A New Kind of Horror featurette in which we get interviews with Writer/Director Evan Marlowe, and voice actors James Masters, the late Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Darren Darnborough, Jordan Peele, Rich Fulcher, and Christopher McDonald.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork, plus a Limited Edition Slipcover (First Pressing Only) with unique artwork.
Special Features:
- A New Kind of Horror: Interviews with the performers and filmmakers (4:34) including Writer/Director Evan Marlowe, and voice actors James Masters, Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Darren Darnborough, Jordan Peele, Rich Fulcher, and Christopher McDonald.
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Evan Marlowe and producer Kerry Marlowe
- Audio Commentary with puppeteer Danny Montooth
- First Pressing of Blu-ray comes with Limited Edition Slipcover with Alternate Artwork
Buy it!
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