Films featuring an all-puppet cast are few and far between, especially within the arena of non-family cinema, but new horror Abruptio is here to buck the trend. Written and directed by Evan Marlowe, Abruptio joins the downtrodden Les Hackel (voiced by James Marsters) as his life comes unstuck. What begins as a regular day in the office descends into violent carnage after Les discovers that a mysterious organisation has inserted a bomb into his head. He is not alone in this situation, with seemingly limitless other citizens suffering the same fate. Rather than band together to take down their controllers, these people are used like puppets to execute some truly deplorable actions.
Told entirely through the use of puppets, Abruptio has a brilliantly creepy atmosphere. Even before the story is fully underway, there is something sinister about the characters. Those with an aversion to dolls are going to have a rough time with Abruptio as these creations are nightmarish. Constructed to look like humans, these puppet characters have all had their features distorted to extreme caricature levels. They are unsettling to look at, and when combined with their on-screen actions, they become terrifying.
Despite being told through the medium of puppetry, Malowe still manages to make Abruptio connect with the audience. The characters on screen may not be made of flesh and blood, but Marlowe still manages to create empathy for them. One might assume that watching a puppet cast hack and decimate one another would lessen the violence, and yet it does not. One sequence involving a home invasion is brutally chilling. The aggression in this particular scene is confronting and it sets an uncomfortable tone for everything after.
On paper, and screen, Abruptio may seem like a bizarre concept, and yet, it has not stopped some very well-known names and faces from getting involved. The voice cast of Abruptio includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s James Marsters, the late Sid Haig, Robert Englund, and Jordan Peele. It is an impressive cast and hearing them voice these sinister creations gives all of them more dimension. Without looking at the credits it is hard to identify the cast as each of them perfectly inhabit their puppet persona.
Abruptio’s narrative and structure places it somewhere between an eighties action thriller and old school horror science-fiction. It makes for an interesting cocktail that keeps the viewer constantly guessing. The nods to established texts are fun to experience, but Abruptio is very much its own twisted and unique beast. A film whose eeriness gets properly under the skin, this strange creation is proof that audiences need more creepy puppet cast movies.
Abruptio
Summary
An eerie triumph, several sequences in Abruptio are far more confronting than you would expect from a film with a cast of puppets. Overall a chilling and nightmarish trip into the decline of one man’s fate.
Abruptio was reviewed at Grimmfest 2023.
