The slaughterhouse is now open as horror fans can check into Darren Lynn Bousman’s Abattoir on various VOD and Digital HD platforms.

Abattoir centers on a real estate reporter (Jessica Lowndes) who unearths an urban legend about a house being built from rooms where horrific tragedies have occurred. The investigation ultimately leads her and ex-lover Detective Declan Grady (Joe Anderson) to the enigmatic Jebediah Crone (Dayton Callie) and the answer to the question, “How do you build a haunted house?”

But before the film was constructed, the idea was to build up a backstory to Jebediah Crone and his collecting habit.

“Originally, ABATTOIR started off as an idea for a movie,” Bousman tells us. “We had an idea to make this movie about a person named Jebediah Crone that was this inamic cult leader who went into a town and corrupted it with the hopes of building this ABATTOIR within the town.”

“When I went in to start pitching it around, Barry Levin, who was president of Radical Studios, suggested the idea that since the mythology was so dense, we started off this universe with a comic book. So the movie was put on hold while the comic book was conceived up and written. And once the comic book was launched and we realized there was an audience, we decided to move ahead with the film.”

He continued: “The idea originally of ABATTOIR stemmed from an original idea between myself and a friend of mine named Michael Peterson. However, the movie was actually created by myself and Chris Monfette, who was the writer. Chris has been a tremendous influence on what ABATTOIR would become. I actually met Chris years earlier, when he sent me a spec-script called “Down Satan,” that was based on a Clyde Barker short, and I just fell in love with his writing style.”

The idea behind Abattoir is that Jebediah Crone is building the ultimate haunted house, which ultimately means that the film had to deliver spooks. Bousman explains his visions for the ghosts that haunt the massive labyrinth of horrors and how it became a massive roadblock.

“The idea on the ghosts of ABATTOIR changed throughout the course, so pre- production through post-production,” Bousman revealed. “Originally the idea that we conceived up was deemed impossible. We got into post and we realized the cost and time it would take to actually create the ghosting effect. So we were in this really unique and strange situation where the movie was finished and edited, and we had to rethink the ghosts entirely. We ended up using a variation of something that I wanted to do but it was a nightmare realizing that the movie was done and we still had to wait 8 months while the visual effects had to be completed and completely rethought from what we did when we were shooting the film.”

Supernatural horror is at its peak right now, which means it’s hard to really come up with something new and unique. Bousman doesn’t believe Abattoir is necessarily a haunted house film, let alone horror, but reveals he was inspired by film noir.

“I think for starters ABATTOIR is not even a haunted house film; I don’t know if ABATTOIR is even a horror film. ABATTOIR is this mish-mash kind of combination of genres. It is two thirds a murder mystery/film noir that becomes a horror film by the last act and that to me is what is exciting about the movie and why it is different from other movies of this sort. It becomes a horror film; it doesn’t start off as one. I was inspired by film noir. I was inspired by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and I always wondered what it would be like if they ever made a horror film. ABATTOIR is sort of my answer to that.”

Bousman elaborates on his noir influences and how he hoped to make something we’ve never seen before.

“I wanted ABATTOIR to have a unique feel and I wanted it to be separate from what people have seen me do in the past. Being a huge noir fan, I wanted to try to implement threads of noir into the movie. It can be easily seen and heard in the way that they talk and the way that they dress. I wanted the dialogue to have a hyperrealism to it. So while the film is modern, they talk in a very stylized 40s/50s fashion. Also, if you pay attention to the production design, everything is modern but they choose to decorate it in the 40s and 50s. An example – Julia Talben writes on a typewriter, yet she has a computer just sitting off to the right of her. She watches things on a tube TV, yet there is a flat screen TV hanging directly above it.”

While not explicitly gory, Abattoir had to deliver in order to live up to its name.

“The movie is not as bloody or gory as something like the SAW films. That being said, there is still a fair amount of violence. When you make a movie called ABATTOIR, which means slaughterhouse, you kind of have to live up to the name. There are numerous deaths that occur, but most definitely this is not a gory film. This is much more a murder mystery, a “who-done-it” and why, with hints of horror sprinkled throughout.”

The sequel that had been announced at the American Film Market last year is “still very much in the works” – but for those who are loving this potential new horror universe will be excited to learn there’s a Chinese spinoff already being constructed.

“The DWELLING is a spin-off Chinese film, believe it or not, that is also being constructed right now. I don’t think any of us are done with ABATTOIR or the universe. I think we would all like to continue to see what would happen next in the world of Jebediah Crone.”