Timothy Glaraton
Lester Hackell, the star of Evan Marlowe’s Abruptio, is just your average loser: a thirty-five-year-old recovering alcoholic still stuck living at home, has just been dumped by his longtime girlfriend, and is working a job that he can’t stand. Also, he’s recently woken up with a bomb sewn into his neck. Oh yeah, and he’s a life-sized hand puppet.
When I saw a press email about Abruptio, playing this weekend at Brazil’s Fantaspoa festival after taking home the Audience Award for Best FX at Kansas City’s Panic Fest, I knew it was a film I had to see for myself. Surreal horror, social commentary, puppetry, and a voice cast that includes the likes of Jordan Peele, Robert Englund, and one of the final performances of the iconic Sid Haig? Sold. Thankfully, Abruptio was just as bizarre and unnerving as I expected it to be going in. But what surprised me was how profound and at times moving the film could be.
The first thing to talk about with Abruptio: those puppets. Unlike most films that make use of puppetry, Abruptio’s puppets are designed to be as realistic and lifelike as possible. These aren’t the colorful characters of The Muppets or Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, but more subdued creations meant to stand in for real actors, resulting in a unique uncanny valley effect. The characters in question talk, act, and generally look like human beings, but with a deliberate offness about them that leaves you in a constant sense of unease, especially as you watch Lester grow seemingly more and more indifferent to the heinous acts he’s being ordered to commit.
This offness extends into the story that follows, as Lester’s drab, depressing life is turned upside down when he wakes up with a bomb sewn into his neck and starts receiving messages ordering him to commit an increasingly escalating series of crimes. This leads him on a deranged, bloody odyssey of murder, conspiracy, and alien invasions as the world around him grows more and more violent and insane, accompanied by an increasingly bizarre cast of characters brought to life by an impressive voice cast: James Marsters’ Lester, equal parts sad sack and borderline sociopathically indifferent, Jordan Peele’s brief turn as the ill-fated Danny, Robert Englund as a nervous, germaphobic CPA, Hana Mae Lee’s Chelsea, seemingly the only sane person left in Lester’s life, and of course the late, great Sid Haig as a raunchy, cantankerous old man who’s not so secretly the best part of the whole thing.
But it’s in the last half hour that Abruptio comes into its own, as the seemingly disparate elements of the story wind up fitting together in profound, heartbreaking fashion. Similar to the ending of Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., the last fifteen minutes or so of Abruptio recontextualizes and adds new depth to everything you’ve seen up until then. The scenes of Lester being tortured at the hands of police seem, at first glance, to be a perverse piece of social commentary on the current state of our justice system—the lawyer Lester is granted is a sadistic, mentally disabled man and the police want him to confess without telling him what crime they want him to confess to—but once the film reveals its true nature, it takes on new meaning as a reflection of the guilt that is eating Lester alive.
Yes, Abruptio is a bloody, darkly humorous film satirizing the seemingly insane state of the modern world acted out by life-sized hand puppets, but at its heart, this is a surprisingly profound story of guilt, coping mechanisms, and taking accountability for the things you’ve done and the direction you want your life to take. Abruptio is currently making its rounds on the festival circuit, but it’s the rare piece of horror I would describe as “can’t miss” once it gets a wider release.
