After watching a disturbing film like Abigail, you might double-take the next time an adorable little ballerina skips across the room. The young actress who portrays the vampire in Universal’s latest addition to the genre certainly knows how to hold her own. Meet Alisha Weir — or maybe she already stole your heart as another named character: Matilda, from the recent Roald Dahl musical adaptation on Netflix.
But in this hard R-rated horror movie, she doesn’t sing like Matilda — she dances through this twisted, often funny horror film from filmmaking group Radio Silence: directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and producer Chad Villella. To give you an idea of how gory it gets: they apologized for how much blood they used for Abigail with the cast. Oof. In today’s day and age, that means something.
But I mean, you know what you’re getting into with a “Dracula’s daughter” type of deal here. It’s not everybody’s gory over-the-top-ness, but at the end of the day it’s entertaining.
Remember when The Cabin in the Woods (2011) started out in a boring office setting and you were like “Am I in the right movie?” You might feel somewhat similar vibes at the beginning of Abigail. Instead of creepy horror we get a fun opening sequence with a gang of misfits — er, bandits — slowly breaking their way into a big empty house to kidnap a girl (Weir) who will be home soon. The group is led by an all-star ensemble featuring everyone’s favorite colorful character Kathryn Newton (Freaky), household name Kevin Durand (Lost), and late great Angus Cloud whose penultimate film Your Lucky Day is currently streaming on Netflix.
Oh yeah, did we mention some guy named Dan Stevens is leading it all? With an obnoxious mustache and an even more confusing New York accent, his ridiculousness may get a lot of eyerolls through the first act — especially his extra use of the F-word. Heroine Melissa Barrera, who’s been in the real world news lately with regards to celebrities speaking out about the war in the Middle East, but we’re here for entertainment not politics and the Scream VI star certainly holds her own as the morally grounded center of this criminal organization.
But they can all agree that splitting a reward payout of $50 million is enticing once they deliver kidnapped Abigail back to sort of homebase where they meet shady head-honcho Lambert (Breaking Bad star Giancarlo Esposito, really milking that “don’t f*** with me” persona here).
Oh, anybody who knows anything about Abigail knows there’s some vampire sh** involved somewhere — but when does it come? The wait is just nerve-wracking as our animated group — each written with their own unique traits thanks to a solid script — camps out at this luxurious home for 24 hours until Abigail’s rightful dad finally shows up on scene.
When young Abigail wreaks havoc on the gang, taking justice into her own hands and serving it to them on a platter dripping with blood, it’s all downhill from there. The third act is simply too bloody, even for such a fun and ridiculous movie. Plot points and character reveals are scattered throughout but this is not high art — this is silly entertainment for everybody, as evidenced by its MPAA R rating. The best parts of the film come early on when Joey (Barrera) — our protagonist — dissects the group while they’re killing time.
These are the scenes that cinephiles will love — Cloud’s wild card driver Dean gives Euphoria “Fezco” vibes all the way through, and Newton’s Sammy feels like a spiritual successor to her performance in Lisa Frankenstein (which, yes, also came out this year; no, Newton cannot be stopped). It’s great that Barrera gets top billing in a project directed by the same guys who did the last two Scream movies, but her Joey character in Abigail feels very close to her Sam Carpenter role … not that I’m complaining.
Then there’s Stevens: his hot-headed-cop-turned-crook Frank is like if you mashed up every great character he’s ever played in any Hollywood anything and made them rob banks. He has an amazing standoff with Esposito at the end but before all of that Frank has what feels like an infinite supply of eye-rollingly bad one-liners that might still make you laugh until you cry.
Abigail’s father shows up later for a fun little cameo that leaves room for franchise potential blah blah blah … But also it seems like Radio Silence have no fear when it comes to leaning into wild territory (maybe just too far sometimes …), because why else would they keep making such messy movies? They’re really good at hit-or-miss fanfare though; can’t say they don’t swing for the fences every time, at least.
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