Movie Spotlight: Abyss

A series of murders. Each body marked with a tarot card. The detective tracking the killer is himself a corrupt man, and he knows it. What he doesn’t know yet is why he can’t stop.

André Audigier’s Abyss began not with a crime but with a question he couldn’t shake: What is justice? Not the legal definition. The human one. What happens when someone concludes that the institutions built to protect people have failed them? And at what point does the attempt to correct that failure become something else entirely?

The Tower

Clara does not think of herself as a killer. She thinks of herself as someone restoring a moral order that has been lost. The tarot card that defines her is The Tower, which represents collapse, revelation, and the destruction of existing structures. Each killing is a ceremony, not a crime. What Audigier was interested in is the dissonance: the audience gradually realizing that Clara isn’t delusional, exactly. She has a framework. It’s just one that most people would find terrifying. The occult imagery in the film functions as psychology, not the supernatural. The Tower tells you how Clara sees the world.

Alessandro’s Problem

The detective pursuing her is not a hero. Alessandro is compromised in ways the film makes clear early. What draws him to Clara is not primarily the violence. It’s her conviction. She believes in something. She has a moral system that tells her what is right and what is wrong, and she acts on it without hesitation. Alessandro once had something like that. He doesn’t anymore. That absence is what makes Clara an obsession. She is simultaneously a victim, a perpetrator, a vigilante, and a deeply traumatized person. Whether what she is doing repairs anything, or merely creates more suffering, is something every viewer has to decide for themselves.

From Mexico City to Prague

The film moves across continents, and each location tracks Alessandro’s internal state. Mexico City is where the story begins as a crime thriller, concrete and grounded. After his suspension he retreats to Costa Rica. New information pulls him back. Los Angeles and eventually Prague follow. The further he travels, the more reality bends. Audigier chose Prague deliberately: a city of history, secrets, and shifting identities. By the time Alessandro arrives, he is no longer fully certain what he is following. The moment his search for Clara becomes more important than the truth itself is the moment the film’s grip on stable reality lets go.

The Scene He Couldn’t Get Right

The hardest scene to land was Alessandro’s encounter with the woman he believes might be Clara. Too obvious and the mystery collapses. Too vague and the emotional weight disappears. Audigier needed the audience to sit in exactly the same uncertainty as Alessandro himself: is this her, or is he seeing what he wants to see? That question, he says, is the heart of the film.

What to Know Before You Press Play

Abyss is Audigier’s first feature, and he wants you to know that upfront. His background is music. Then music videos. Then books. Filmmaking was not part of a plan but the natural continuation of something already in motion. No formal film education. No large budget. Just a story he needed to tell and a set of questions that wouldn’t leave him alone: What is justice? When does justice become revenge? What happens when people lose faith in the systems supposed to protect them? Some of those questions get answered. Most don’t. If you finish still arguing about who, if anyone, was right, the film did exactly what he hoped.

Thriller

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Streaming now on Relay.