Abigail review
Abigail is an easy to appreciate horror film. Some morally deficient characters of various skills and specialties are assembled — Avengers style — to kidnap a young girl. They should have gotten the money up front as their hostage packs more bite than they could have ever imagined.
After smoothly pulling off the kidnapping, the six strangers meet up with their contact, Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito, The Mandalorian), at a deserted isolated mansion. Lambert doesn’t have many rules for the group beyond staying vigilant for 24 hours and not using real names. To make things easier on that front, he gives them nicknames from a previous pack.
Mr. Take Charge is Frank (Dan Stevens) while the boozy wheelman (the late Angus Cloud) is Dean. For the hacker (Kathryn Newton, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania), she gets Sammy. Team heavy (Kevin Durand) is Peter while the medic (Melissa Barrera, Scream) is Joey. And just to mix things up the serious sniper (Willaim Catlett, Black Lightning) is Don Rickles.
None of the group questions why Lambert chooses this deserted location. Or why he would choose a mansion of all things as an inconspicuous hideout.
Frank fancies himself the team leader but it’s Joey who quickly reads the “pack.” She sizes up their backstories that led them to taking on this desperate quest.
What Joey doesn’t know is the link that’s brought them all together. As the medic, Joey gets volunteered to check on their kidnapped charge, Abigail (Alisha Weir).
The trailer “spoils” the big reveal that Abigail is hardly a sweet, innocent girl who loves ballet. She’s actually a vampire. It would have been tough selling the film without showing that card.
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Fortunately, prolific director duo Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, aka Radio Silence, have far more in store for Abigail than the big reveal. Screenwriters Stephen Shields and Guy Busick quickly address the question of how ill-prepared group of strangers could contend with a vampire. Abigail likes to play with her food. It’s a simple explanation but does cover a significant potentially stick plot point.
Abigail has more in common with the duo’s 2019 hit Ready or Not. There’s the tough and competent final girl, stuck in a mansion with no way out and a metric ton of bloodshed. The fake blood budget for this one must have been half the production costs. Not a complaint, mind you. This is a horror film and Abigail is unapologetically excessively bloody.
Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin take a few players off the board early, but not before developing the team dynamics. That’s helpful when Abigail starts claiming victims. Their deaths actually have meaning thanks to the strong performances.
Weir does a fantastic job portraying Abigail as a manipulative puppet master with an eccentric side. She incorporates her ballet lessons into her intimidation and murders. The directors might lean little too heavy into the vampire ballerina shtick at times, but it does make for some creatively staged action scenes.
Barrera, who collaborated with Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin on the last two Scream films, comes off like a versatile horror movie star. She gives Joey guile and guts as well as legit flaws. Stevens makes for a strong prickly would-be authoritative figure while Durand plays against type as the likable lunkhead.
Beyond delivering some massively gory sequences. Abigial is definitely not for the squeamish. It’s telling when an off-camera decapitation is the tamest death scene. There are more than a few scenes where the blood splatter hits and covers the camera to provide a real in your face experience.
Abigail delivers exactly what the trailers promise. You won’t need an umbrella to protect from all the blood and body parts raining down, but it almost feels necessary at times. This fun premise makes for a dancing good time.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures