Abigail Review: Too Much Blood, Radicalism & Mess
Abigail Review: Horror movies nowadays are either a total mess or a fine outing. Abigail‘s first half is what I call a fine outing, despite no horror material, as it only runs as a thriller till then, but then there is a messy second half, which I can slam for being too ridiculous at moments. It’s an attempt at a new kind of horror cinema where comedy and radicalism try to mend themselves with devilish moments, but it successfully fails to get the expected results. It was almost a fine take on a horror thriller until we ran across the last 30 minutes filled with back-to-back twists and ridiculously entertaining moments that I feel will hardly get appreciated. That’s where the entire show was spoiled, and so unexpectedly.
Lambert hires a group of six people (played by Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, and the late Angus Cloud) to kidnap a little girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir). The group is expecting $50 million as ransom money from her father and takes the girl to a deserted mansion at a remote location. The group learns who the girl’s father is and gets scared of work, but can’t be helped since they are left locked inside the mansion for the next 24 hours. Unaware of the fact that the girl is a vampire, the group members are pitted against each other and soon start getting killed. What happens when the remaining group members learn about the girl’s true personality? Will they be able to stop her?
Abigail hasn’t got anything to do with Dracula’s Daughter (1936), except that it’s a completely new re-imagination of the main character, who is Dracula’s Daughter. The film looks like a fine and gripping thriller until the moment group members are exposed to the fact that the girl is a vampire. After that, it becomes a mess. The film suffers from basic mistakes in the writing, and the writers should be held responsible for them. Dracula is scared of light; we all know that, and this film uses that notion to make us believe that again. But we have some scenes where the light is visible, yet it leaves no effect on the Dracula girl. Sammy’s scene of turning into “one of them” will make you understand what I am saying. From here, a long boredom begins, and it becomes a terrible mess by the end. We can’t figure out how some kidnappers are turned into vampires, are pitted against each other, and then form a sudden friendship with that girl vampire, and all that is totally rubbish. This is how radical screenplay harms a basic, simple, and good-looking script.
Melissa Barrera looks hot in some scenes and mostly clueless in other scenes. She has become quite a horror-girl nowadays with the Scream franchise and this, while a significant work like In the Heights (2021) is rarely seen from here. Dan Stevens does well, and Kathryn Newton is your sexy girl from the next classroom. Will Catlett and Kevin Durand pass the time somehow, and the late Angus Cloud disappears after a few, oops.. many drinks. The head-cutting scene was left incomplete; I don’t know why. Alisha Weir will frighten you for sure, and it’s a great achievement for any teenage girl to make the audience scare a bit. And those dance moves were killer. This ballerina vampire will keep you on your toes. A couple of cameo roles by Giancarlo Esposito and Matthew Goode don’t help much but are decent.
Abigail is a well-made film on the technical front. The cinematography is fine, as we get some horrifying close-ups—just what the horror genre needs. The sound effects are pretty effective. Some of them do give you jump scares. Coming to visual effects, there is too much blood and red-bath, which seems considerably well in terms of context, but the outline doesn’t provide much to your cinematic experience. Those organ/body bursting into flour-like blood look childish sometimes. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Abigail makes a new-age attempt that works only on half measures. The directors duo totally seemed rattlebrained while accepting Stephen Shields and Guy Busick‘s storyline. This has so many things going wrong in those last 30 minutes that I’ll need to write another separate review just to mention the flaws in those scenes. I can’t do that here, though. No spoilers because it has that spoiler-filled experience. But even twists need to be handled with care and intelligence. Abigail lacks both.
Abigail Movie Details
Release Date: 26 Apr 2024
Banner: Radio Silence Productions, Vinson Films, Project X Entertainment
Director: Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
Cast: Alisha Weir, Angus Cloud, William Catlett, Kathryn Newton, Melissa Barrera, Matthew Goode, Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, Giancarlo Esposito
