Abruptio Movie Review

Written by Stephen McClurg

Released by HellBent Pictures

Written and directed by Evan Marlowe
2023, 109 minutes, Not Rated
Released on January 24th, 2023

Starring:
James Marsters as Les Hackel
Jordan Peele as Danny
Hana Mae Lee as Chelsea
Robert Englund as Mr. Salk
Sid Haig as Sal Cheek
Christopher McDonald as Police Chief Richter

Review:

Abruptio has my favorite opening scene from this year so far: a human-sized puppet drives a car while listening to aggressive free jazz. Les, the main character and puppet (James Marsters), looks realistic while just scraping the sides of the uncanny valley. While the puppet designs don't go for raunchy parodies like Meet the Feebles (1989), they reside on a continuum of disturbingly realistic to just south of the least cartoonish Spitting Image character. Les’s longing expression, combined with the battery of repetitive and meaningless daily tasks ripped straight from a Samuel Beckett play, drew me in with less than a minute of screen time. Later, as Les looks ardently at a co-worker and silently straightens the last pen in a line of otherwise equally spaced utensils, a viewer can already see not only how much world-building is done but also how much of the inner world is there. Les, like all good puppets, has a psyche. 

Les is simultaneously distant and yearning for connection. He seems lonesome as a middle-aged man playing guitar in his room while his mom bangs on the door for him to stop. On the same day his lukewarm relationship ends, someone pushes a young girl in front of his car, he seeks solace in his loser friend Danny (Jordan Peele) who writes bad songs, and says he’ll never get a real job and sure as hell isn’t giving up beer. Turns out these won’t even be the strangest things that happen to Les during these last twenty-four hours of a normal life.

After a few days, Danny contacts Lester to see if he has a scar on the back of his neck. And when he does, Danny reveals he’s been told that they have bombs implanted in their necks. This marks one of the many genre jumps that characterize the narrative. The film has elements of ‘70s paranoia thrillers (as the poster art suggests), science fiction, and gore, among other genres. The president is killed on TV. Characters begin receiving instructions to commit increasingly more absurd and bloodier acts, from shooting an entire family to grinding up bodies that are at various levels of decay.

I deeply admire the resourcefulness and fortitude for fulfilling a project like this, even if I ultimately don’t like every decision. To nitpick, I didn’t care for the 2D animation that plays on televisions or the occasional use of digital blood splatter. The filmmakers nail the integration of multiple genres while maintaining an overall tone. That’s a fantastic balance to pull off, especially when the movie took several years to make. Given all this, I can’t understand why it lands on an ending that feels stripped from another movie, especially one that shifts the emotional center of the film. 

I found it audacious, charming, and full of macabre humor–until the ending, when it wasn’t any of these.

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