The Abode is one of those movies that makes you check the runtime every 15 minutes, not because you’re scared time is running out—but because you’re stunned it hasn’t already.
On paper, it sounds like the setup for a nasty little supernatural horror: in the 18th century, a pirate named Redbeard slaughters a Native American tribe in a fit of rage, and nearly three hundred years later, the spirits of the victims, the pirate, and his wife are cursed to relive the night of the massacre. In practice, it’s more like watching a haunted Escape Room where nobody has the clues, the script, or the budget.
Pirates, Curses, and the Slow Death of Potential
The premise has teeth. Pirate war crimes plus Native American revenge spirits? You could go full folk horror, political horror, bloody ghost revenge, or even psychological guilt-trip nightmare. The Abode looks at all those possibilities and says, “What if we just… didn’t?”
We get a cursed loop: same night, same spirits, same tragedy, over and over. Unfortunately, the movie leans so hard into repetition that it feels like we’re the ones trapped in the time loop. Characters wander around a creepy house, whisper about strange feelings, mention the past, and occasionally point out that something is wrong—as if the audience hadn’t noticed we’re 40 minutes in and nothing has happened except mood lighting and vague tension.
It’s like watching a ghost repeatedly clear its throat instead of actually saying “boo.”
The Vibes Are There; the Movie Isn’t
To its credit, the film tries to set a mood. There’s an old house, a cursed history, an air of melancholy, and the sense that time doesn’t move quite right inside these walls. You can tell the director, Claudia La Bianca, wanted atmosphere. There are plenty of lingering shots, dramatic stares, and spectral hints that something terrible lingers under the surface.
The problem is: atmosphere without backbone just turns into expensive cosplay. You can only watch people stare at unseen forces and react to off-screen dread for so long before you start rooting for the curse to at least speed things up and kill someone interesting.
Characters: Ghosts Have More Personality
Karmel Bortoleti stars as Jessica, and judging by the credits and marketing, this is meant to be a showcase role. She does what she can with it: there’s commitment in her performance, a visible effort to convey fear, confusion, and eventual understanding. The problem is the script gives her about three emotional notes to play and then loops them like a cursed Spotify playlist.
Jessica wanders the house. Jessica senses weirdness. Jessica discovers The Terrible Past (in exposition form). Jessica reacts with varying levels of widened eyes. Rinse, repeat.
The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better:
-
Lara (Ariadna Gonzales Medina) exists mostly to share scenes and dialogue that sound like they were written by someone who’s only ever heard human beings talk through badly translated subtitles.
-
Dr. Roberts (Teance Blackburn) has “I know something” energy but rarely gets to do anything except hint and vanish.
-
Talako (Montana Cypress), presumably tied to the Native American element, is criminally underused in a story that should have revolved around that perspective and doesn’t.
-
Sofia (Vanessa Falabella) floats around in the mix, but the film never decides if she’s a linchpin or just another warm body in the house.
-
Redbeard / Mr. Smith (Chris Darsow) manages to be both a pirate and a guy named Mr. Smith, which is… a choice. As villains go, he never feels particularly menacing—more “community theater Captain Hook” than timeless engine of horror.
There’s a lot of posing, a lot of hinting, and very little that feels like fully realized character work. You don’t empathize with them. You don’t hate them. You just kind of watch them occupy screen space until the curse demands activity.
Horror? Technically.
This is billed as a supernatural horror film, and technically, it is. There are ghosts. There’s a curse. There’s a pirate. There’s a massacre in the backstory. On paper, the horror résumé is complete.
In execution, the scares are an awkward mix of:
-
People staring into middle distance.
-
Slight audio spikes and “did you hear that?” reactions.
-
The occasional spectral moment that feels like the filmmakers got access to a fog machine and were determined to justify renting it.
There’s very little escalation. No real sense of “this is getting worse” so much as “this is still happening.” The curse—reliving the same tragic night—should feel like an inescapable nightmare. Instead, it feels like a poorly reset scene where everyone hits their marks and recites their lines like they’re running rehearsal number seven.
If horror is about dread, danger, and unpredictability, The Abode mostly offers déjà vu and mild confusion.
The Curse of the Thin Script
Everything wrong with this movie circles back to the writing. Andre Alves’ screenplay (with extra dialogue by Nick Smith) feels like a rough draft that never got punched up, cut down, or clarified.
We get:
-
Exposition dumps instead of organic discovery.
-
On-the-nose lines that sound like everyone’s reading the back of the DVD case to each other.
-
Characters explaining themes the movie never actually delivers on.
The central idea—that all of these spirits are forced to relive the massacre night after night—is haunting in theory, but the script never commits to showing us the true psychological horror of that. What does that do to them? How do they change? Do they remember every cycle? Are they self-aware? Do they try to break it differently each time? Or are they puppets?
Instead of engaging with those questions, the film mostly shrugs and says, “They’re cursed. It’s sad. Anyway, here’s another scene where everyone looks tense near a candle.”
Pirates & Indigenous Trauma, Lite
Let’s talk about the elephant in the cursed room: the premise begins with a colonial massacre of a Native American tribe. That is heavy, painful material. It demands care, depth, and a point of view.
In The Abode, it feels more like set dressing—a grim origin story used to justify the haunting, rather than a tragedy the film is actually interested in grappling with. Talako’s presence suggests an attempt to weave Indigenous perspective into the narrative, but the footage feels more like tokenism than true centering.
If you’re going to build your horror on top of real historic atrocities, you either go all in—making that history the core of your movie—or you pick a different premise. Here, it’s treated like a convenient backstory. It’s uncomfortable, and not in the productive “horror makes you think” way—more in the “maybe don’t use genocide as flavor text” kind of way.
Production Values: Ambition vs. Wallet
You can see the ambition. There are period elements, pirate backstory, spiritual mythos, and a looping timeline. But ambition doesn’t cancel out visible budget constraints.
The sets feel limited, often like the same spaces shot from slightly different angles. Costumes are fine but rarely convincing enough to sell the period or the supernatural gravitas. The visuals lack the confidence or style to distract from the thinness of the story.
It all has the energy of a passion project that needed either:
-
More money, or
-
Less scope and a tighter, more intimate focus
Instead, it tries to do both “epic curse spanning centuries” and “haunted house chamber piece” and ends up underserving both.
Final Verdict: One Ghostly Eyepatch out of Five
The Abode had the bones of something interesting: a pirate massacre, a centuries-old curse, ghosts forced to relive their worst night forever. But the execution is all soft edges and missed opportunities.
Instead of terrifying, it’s tepid. Instead of emotionally rich, it’s shallow. Instead of leaning into its bolder ideas, it plays everything safe and repetitive.
If you’re a die-hard supernatural horror fan who must consume all cursed-house content, you might find a few moments of atmosphere to appreciate—and maybe enjoy rolling your eyes at some of the clunkier dialogue.
But if you’re looking for something that actually does justice to its concept? You’ll probably end up feeling like one of the spirits in the film: stuck in the same loop, watching the same bad decisions, wondering what you did to deserve this.
