Review: Abigail (2024)

Abigail (2024)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, pervasive language and brief drug use

Score: 4 out of 5

The trailers for Abigail, the latest from the Radio Silence team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, promised a simple, straightforward horror/comedy that inverted the premise of their prior film Ready or Not (a lone female character faces off against a group of people inside a mansion, but this time, she's the villain), and that's exactly what the film delivered. Probably the biggest problem I had with this movie is that the trailers spoiled way too many of its wild plot turns, not least of all the central hook that the little girl at the center of the film is actually a vampire, which the film itself doesn't reveal until nearly halfway in -- but then again, I was having way too good a time with this movie to really care all that much. I came for blood and some grim laughs, and I got them, courtesy of some standout performances and filmmakers who know exactly how to take really gory violence and make it more fun than gross. If you like your horror movies bloody, this is certainly one to check out.

Our protagonists are a group of criminals who have been recruited by a man named Lambert to kidnap Abigail, the 12-year-old daughter of a very wealthy man, after she gets home from ballet practice and hold her ransom for $50 million. However, once they've taken her to their safehouse, a rustic mansion deep in the woods, strange occurrences start happening around them, and one by one, they start turning up brutally murdered. Before long, they learn two things. First, Abigail's rich father is actually Kristof Lazar, a notorious crime boss who has a brutal and fearsome assassin named Valdez on his payroll who may well have been sent to take out these hoodlums. Second, and more importantly, Abigail is herself Valdez -- and a vampire. A very pissed-off vampire who quickly gets loose and goes to war against her captors, using all her vampiric powers against them.

In a manner not unlike From Dusk Till Dawn, the film starts as a slow-burn crime thriller with few hints as to what Abigail truly is, instead focusing on fleshing out our main characters, a motley crew of entertaining crooks who have no idea what they're getting into. Our protagonists may not be a particularly sympathetic bunch (being kidnappers and all), but all of them are great characters who are very fun to watch, reacting as many of us would to seeing what happens in the latter half of the film and anchoring the mayhem in something human. Melissa Barrera makes for a likable and compelling lead as the token good one/telegraphed final girl Joey (not her real name; they all use codenames taken from members of the Rat Pack), Kathryn Newton was hilarious and got some of the biggest moments in the film as the rich kid hacker Sammy, and Giancarlo Esposito made the most of his limited screen time as their mysterious leader Lambert, but the real standout among the protagonists was Dan Stevens as Frank, a corrupt ex-cop who becomes the de facto leader of the group and takes charge once the carnage begins only to turn out to have some skeletons in his closet. This was a group of people who all felt like fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters who I wanted to see either succeed or, in some cases, get what they had coming to them, even if the words "let's split up" were used a bit too often during the third act.

The true MVP among the cast, though, was Alisha Weir as Abigail. In the first act, she's excellent at playing an innocent-seeming little girl -- with emphasis on "playing", as every so often she lets her precocious mask slip just enough to let both her caretaker Joey and the audience know that she knows a lot more than she's letting on. After the reveal, she turns into a hell of a villain, a potty-mouthed psycho who's absolutely relishing getting to murder her captors, operating with glee as she fights them and continuing to taunt them even when they think they have the upper hand. The film makes great use of the fact that Abigail is also a ballerina, not just in her outfit but also in how the action and chase sequences give Weir (who has a background in musical theater) ample opportunity to show off her dance skills, which has the effect of framing Abigail as the antithesis of her captors: violent as hell, but also elegant and graceful in a way that lets you know that she's probably been doing this for a very long time. I can see Weir going places in the future, if her performance here is any indication.

When it comes to scares, this film is a mess of gore, inflicted on both Abigail and her captors. The first act keeps us in the dark as to what's really going on, and did a good job building tension as Abigail lurks in the shadows and the characters find the dead and mutilated bodies of her victims, not knowing what's really happening. There are decapitations, a man having half his face torn off, lots of bites, and more than one instance of somebody exploding into a mess of gore (a gag that, going by how they used it in Ready or Not, Radio Silence seem to be pretty big fans of). There's a creepy sequence of somebody getting psychically possessed by Abigail that spices up the proceedings with a different kind of horror, especially as the performance of the actor playing the victim shifts. The climax was action-packed and filled with vampire mayhem, and while I thought the story was kinda spinning its wheels at this point, the film was still too much fun for me to really fault it too much. At this point, Radio Silence has become a brand I trust when it comes to delivering popcorn horror experiences that aren't that deep, but are still very fun, enjoyable times at either the multiplex or in front of your TV.

The Bottom Line

I came to see a ballerina vampire kick people's asses for nearly two hours, and that's exactly what I got. Abigail is a rock-solid, rock-em-sock-em good time of a horror/comedy buoyed by a great cast and directors who know how to entertain. If you don't mind lots of blood, check it out.