This movie certainly has an interesting setup. After a woman's sister's family is murdered she finds the room they were killed in was ripped out of the home. She then investigates and finds more rooms all over have been similarly ripped out.

She is a real estate reporter conveniently enough, with a cop friend/boyfriend which is also convenient. This of course enables her to quickly track down these stolen rooms to a forgotten and dying town.

It manages some tension and creepiness while working out the mysteries and I think it is worth a watch. It has its problems though.

The actors were not terrible but they seemed miscast and some just weren't convincing in their role especially the male cop whom I suppose was supposed to be the hard-boiled cop trope but he just wasn't at all.

This next one might just be a me thing but the movie also has an odd design choice to it. Everything was made to look old and at first, I thought the movie took place in the 50s or something but then while driving her incredibly old car the main character is shown with a cell phone. So it was modern times after all. It's all handwaved away as she simply says "I like old things." but it was just so weird to me.

And finally the ending. It's just dumb and nothing is truly explained and what was explained really didn't make sense. It was fairly spooky and violent as it should have been though.

I was super excited for this movie and have been itching to pick it up for a couple of years now, and was going to watch it with my daughters (also horror fan lovers) but read the rating of not to be distributed to under 18 so figured I should watch it alone first....
While it definitely had some graphic death scenes, having watched Saw and Repo, I don't see what made that rating. Even my husband, who is a bit more on the prude side when it comes to gratuitous violence, thought it was more on the tamer side.
So, with that out of the way, the movie itself was beautifully done. The colors were artistic, the acting was well done, and I loved the concept. But it felt like there should be more, like nothing was fleshed out enough. I would have loved to adventure more down the villain's story, more of the town's story, even more of the house's story. I just wanted more and it felt like we weren't given enough of any of the stories to be satisfied.

This movie actually has a terrifying premise and some vile scenes of bloody violence to go with it along with some atmosphere to up the creepy factor but the overall story wasnt well developed . I dont know , this film rates poorly on Rotten Tomatoes but a sequel is supposedly planned , at least according to Wikipeia. I guess theres enough folks about who like this movie to make that happen.
I dont watch tv and dont watch movies all that often and this was featured on Amazon Prime , I got no plans to watch this again but maybe if its sequel shows up on A.P. and I got some downtime ill watch it. Glad I didnt pay more than the annual A.P. membership to see this , I cant imagine what theaters charge these days and THIS aint something worth going to a theater for.
Finally; The villain looks really creepy and I can see him going down in pop culture/horror history as a jason ,Mike Myers, pinhead or what-have-you.

This movie is certainly interesting, and it's difficult to know exactly how to review it. There are a few problems with it, for example, the movie never explained why the two main characters dress and act like stereotype 1940's characters or something, but somehow they have a certain charm to them because of it. I just wish that it had been explained so that I could have understood them better.

The villain in the film is truly evil. The movie's premise is certainly interesting, and certainly original. I love the paranormal elements, and the movie definitely does a good job of establishing a creep factor.

It certainly could have been a lot better. There is almost no aspect of the film that is explained enough to really make it understandable, and that makes it more difficult for the movie to feel real. Many of the decisions that people in the movie make are very difficult to justify, and some of the things that people do feel incredibly story driven.

The part that bothers me the most is that the villian gets lucky an awful lot, which kind of takes away from him being scary. Why can't he genuinely outsmart people? That would make him much scarier, instead, he just sort of falls into everyone accidently bringing about his goals, and that just doesn't make any sense to me.

Anyway, the high points of this movie are definitely strong. The low points definitely take away from the experience though. I think that you will enjoy the movie if you watch it, but don't expect a classic.

The acting is actually pretty good. There aren't any super big names in here, but every actor in the film does a reasonably good job, I can honestly say I would like to see each of them more

Of all the over-used, played-out, need to die and never be seen again, character tropes, perhaps my biggest pet peeve is the... "I'm a hard-boiled, logical person, so I don't believe in the supernatural, even when I see people come back from the dead and see ghosts right before my very eyes."

The movie was doing pretty well, good atmosphere, good production, decent acting. Some of the dialogue was a bit stilted and unnatural, but over all it was forgivable. The plot had some interest.

Then we get to the point where the main characters have literally seen the evil plot outlined in detail from the mouths of the villains, seen proof of the evil deeds, seen (and ostensibly accepted) that the main villain came back from the dead and has been to hell, seen actual ghosts reliving the moments of their tragic deaths, and the police detective utters the line "tell me what is going on here, and I don't believe in ghosts!?"

First of all... anyone with even a single living brain cell who has seen what the characters have seen KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON. You'd have to be a complete and absolute moron to NOT KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON.

Second of all, "I don't believe in ghosts". This same guy earlier in the movie personally uncovered evidence that the main villain came back from the dead and HE LITERALLY JUST SAW ACTUAL GHOSTS moments before.

When that line came out of his mouth, I literally just turned the movie off. At that point I stopped caring what happened to the main characters. They are too stupid to deserve to survive.

I really loved this movie. I saw it originally on Netflix. I was amazed to have even acquired the comic series, that I found out about from the movie credits. I would then subsequently find "The Lost Tapes of the Abattoir" on YouTube. I liked how Darren Bousman brought this movie to be packaged with a six part comic series and a YouTube showing, bringing us pieces to the puzzle if you will. It is not an easy movie to be understood, in my opinion, without the comic series and the YouTube series. I even loved the movie soundtrack.

The movie keeps you engaged. It is arranged very well. It has an old classic feel in the showing of how the characters dress in an old-school fashion, and the idea of a town and not a city. I think that the pace of the movie is good as well. The CGI in this movie was done very well. Allie played her daughter quite well in telling her that her mother had died many years before. "The most horrible thing of all is to watch your children die before you." Having had experiences with cults in my own life, I truly understood where this movie was coming from.

What? Could the dialog have been a little clearer as to what building the "Abattoir" had to do with Crone's family's suffering in Hell? Will they be released from Hell now? Where will they go? What did THEY do to get to Hell (Hell being a personal affair). Where was the misty ghost of the murderer who killed Julie's family? Does his absence in that scene mean Julie actually killed her family? If you kill someone accidentally (without murder in your heart), that is not enough to damn one to Hell, biblically speaking. So, if she didn't kill her family, she did not transgress. Ugh... problems, problems.

I am consistently dismayed at the reviews I read on Amazon. They often appear to be arbitrary, without a defined system in place. When you think about it, that's useless. I want to offer a suggestion to those inclined to rate film: Have a system of rating. Arbitrary rating is stupid, and helps no one. It just makes you feel important, and Amazon knows it (which is why they offer the option). So here's a method that could make rating a semi-meaningful thing for others and make you (as a film rater) have some real relevance: There are 10 criteria (below). Rate each individual criteria by the same 5 star rating system (poor, fair, good, very good, excellent) used for the final review. To earn 1 final review rating star in your review you 2 of the criteria must be good or above. A half star is earned for any 2 criteria combination of fair/good. A quarter star is earned for 2 fairs, and no stars for poor (who wants to reward poor work?). Add everything up after rating each of the ten criteria, and you have a meaningful rating for others to look at and take seriously. If you have a quarter star left over it gets dropped. Here's the list of 10 criteria:
1. Story
2. Plot Development
3. Character Development
4. Cinematography
5. Acting
6. Direction
7. Special Effects
8. Dialog/Script
9. Lighting
10. Sound
I know there are additional criteria one could rate, like stunts, makeup, etc... But for ease of use you should include stunts under Direction, and make up under Special Effects, etc... Maybe, over time, ratings will become more than a mere Amazon gimmick used to make Prime purchasers feel relevant. Remember: Relevance is both subjective and earned. But to be relevant to others, you must be relevant to them, otherwise you're just faking it.

Take a bad script, bad dialogue, bad actors, and a stupid plot and you have this movie. I really think the lead (real estate reporter??) was probably the stupidest woman alive....ever. When a guy makes you a deal and advises you to turn the other way, just do it. Why would you want to visit dead relatives whom she could not save, especially when they were echo figures of them and it was not possible to save them or even communicate with them. They should have had added the producer, writer, and director to the ending and killed them too.