Movies
If you had come up to me, say around the turn of the century, and told me that there would be movies made from such controversial horror stories like The Girl Next Door, Header, The Bighead, and Elizabeth Massie's Abed, I would have probably laughed in your face. But it has happened. Not only that, miraculously, they have been done right.

Abed was originally published in Still Dead. which was the second anthology of zombie stories edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector. Few disagreed that Abed was the most memorable and shocking story in the book.

Beth Massie's fiction often deals with very dysfunctional family relationships. Never has this been more true than with Abed. The story is set in a now-typical post zombie apocalyptic world. A mother and daughter live in an isolated farmhouse. The mother goes about her chores in a routine manner, while the daughter wonders despondently why God has forsaken her and the world.

I pretty much gave up on independent moviemaking about the time digital photography became readily accessible. Especially genre movies. I saw too much crap and I became frustrated with it all. Now that time has passed it seems that production teams are using the medium in much more interesting ways. The filmmakers behind Abed obviously respect the work and skillfully have translated it to the screen.

The movie is shot in a drab, oppressive way, which emphasizes the hopelessness of the story. The main focus is on the two characters. One of whom seems to be in denial of the situation, and the other has given up and succumbed to despair. It is arguable which is more tragic, as neither seem to be actively doing anything realistic to improve their plight. Until Mom has her deranged idea of how to continue their bloodline.

Be forewarned: This is not The Walking Dead. Abed is incredibly disturbing and should be seen by adults only. It's also not like the zombie porn things you may have heard about over the past several years. But for those who like stories of horror that do not flinch, but are well-written and provide more for the brain than fodder for the vomit bag (you know who you are), Abed may well be for you.

At this writing Abed is in distribution limbo. It was successfully funded by Indiegogo, and I was a contributor, which is how I was able to see it. The movie's non-commercial fifty-minute running time makes it a difficult piece to sell to distributors. I feel that movies, like works of prose fiction, should be the length that the story demands. We've all seen thin ideas swelled out to feature length and we've seen good stories rushed to fit into a conventional running time. Hopefully Abed will find a home on DVD, and I hope that horror fans--especially horror fiction fans--will take a chance and buy it.

There is sad element to Abed. Philip Nutman, who produced and appears in the movie, died last year. As a fiction writer and a genre journalist, Nutman has been on the horror scene almost as long as I've been a fan. May he rest in peace.



Review by Mark Sieber

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