Abnormal Attraction is a 2019 fantasy adventure about a world where mythical creatures are real, monsters and humans are forced to coexist.
Movies like director Michael Leavy‘s Abnormal Attraction are a strange breed, made on an ultra low budget, mixing oddball (often lowbrow) comedy, low tech visual effects, cheesy dialogue and wacky performances. There’s an audience for these goofy titles, meant to be wink-wink, tongue-in-cheek, most barely making a blip on the cinematic landscape, yet celebrated for being such. Abnormal Attraction is a decidedly weird entry with a genuinely clever theme and a few good moments, somewhat tarnished by a disorienting mix of unfunny bits and a long run time.
Broken into three chapters, we’re welcomed into a world where monsters (and at least a few loose definitions of such) live among us humans. Naturally, not everyone gets along and well, you know, prejudice and tolerance are on the chopping block. The first stop is to an AA meeting where Dr. Stanley Cole (Bruce Davison) gets cajoled into covering for colleague Nick (Nathan Reid), who is trying to making things work with his fiancée (Nicole Balsam). Problem is, AA isn’t what you (or he) thinks it is, instead – as you’ve already guessed – it means Abnormal Attraction, where humans are obsessed with monsters. Next up, we follow the story of Nick, who is kidnapped by monsters, who think Nick is a ‘monster masher,’ making life miserable for the non-humans. ‘Course they don’t realize that Nick is actually just the opposite, working to stop the mistreatment of abominable snowmen, cyclopses, pigmen, beasts, and every other assorted types in the lot. Lastly … well. Time for a battle and a few secrets to come out of the dark.
Without much subtlety, the message of the day is ‘being different is okay,’ the movie stringing together a loosely-bound story we all know far too well, just dressed in new clothes. And fangs. It doesn’t have much nuance, ‘monsters’ filling in for all the things real society has long targeted for discrimination. Leading the charge is Madame Hildie (Leslie Easterbrook), who was long ago scorned by her high school boyfriend. In league with her is The Boogeyman (an unseen and only heard behind a mask, Malcolm McDowell), who seems to have borrowed the eyes from Pale Man, trying to punish those who hate his kind. But can any of it make a difference?
Revelling in its sexual overtones, proudly adopting a kind of ‘adult take’ on fairy tale characters, there’s plenty of profanity and nods to sexual innuendo, the movie somehow stays wildly tame, with no nudity or extreme violence. Either way, the potential for broad comedy is in place, with the script tossing joke after joke at the screen in hopes of some hitting the mark, and sure, a few do, it’s inevitable. However, one’s taste for such is going to be the barometer for whether this works or not.As is a guy named Finbar (Jason Leavy)
I can’t deny that some of this earns some chuckles. Jim Hanks as Frank Stein is pretty funny. As is Richmond Shepard as Sandman. Gilbert Gottfried shows up as Pig Man and gets a few grins, but others don’t do as well, even as they put in the work. With all the monsters being actors dressed in what amounts to Halloween costumes, there’s hordes of rubber masks and red corn syrup blood, giving it a kind of old school charm that no doubt helps in selling the low-key angle. Whether you ‘get it’ or not, well, hard to tell. Fans of this kind of offbeat humor might find something to smirk at, however, for me, it lacked a better satirical punch and missed opportunities to make its message matter.