A disparate group of kidnappers gets much, much more than they bargained for in Abigail, a blood-soaked new horror-thriller now playing in Prague and cinemas worldwide. Despite some engaging performances, splatterific gore effects, and a fun central twist, this one falters at a core storytelling level as logic and character motivation are slowly drained from the narrative.
Abigail opens with a group of thieves planning some a of heist that soon reveals itself to be a kidnapping, as a group of masked characters invades a mansion to whisk away the precocious ballerina daughter of a presumably wealthy parents.
Taking inspiration from Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the kidnappers themselves don’t know each other, but are given aliases by organizer Lambert (an under-utilized Giancarlo Esposito): there’s team lead and former cop Frank (Dan Stevens), dumb muscle Peter (Kevin Durand), smarmy hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton), and braindead driver Dean (Angus Cloud).
And then our protagonist Joey (Melissa Barrera), who intervenes when Frank reels back to hit the titular pre-teen victim (played in a bravura turn by Matilda: The Musical‘s Alisha Weir) when she fights back. The kidnappers are tasked by Lambert to guard Abigail at his own mansion estate while he secures a ransom from her father… but things take a dark turn as this little girl is not as innocent as she first appears.
Abigail has a pretty great narrative twist, one that also nods to early Tarantino, that only becomes clear at the film’s halfway point. Inexplicably, almost all promotional material for the film – the trailer, the still images, even its one-line summary – let the cat out of the bag. If you don’t know Abigail‘s big secret going in, try to avoid spoilers and you’ll probably have a much better time with the movie.
Even if you do know where the story is going, however, Abigail delivers plenty of fun along the way. Once the action moves to Lambert’s mansion, it sticks there for the duration, and there’s a fun House on Haunted Hill quality to watching these characters explore the depths of this single setting and the oddities it contains.
The cast, too, has a lot of fun with the material, with Stevens’ flavorful New York accent and Durand’s gentle giant highlights alongside Cloud, who passed away last year, in his final screen role. But Weir steals the show throughout. The extensive gore effects spare none of the cast, with even Barrera’s lead drenched in blood by the finale.
We know what’s up with Abigail about halfway through, and if the story were to play out in the usual fashion there would be no qualms. But instead, the script by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick seems to wants to throw in more twists at every turn, and ends up with a story that falls apart. By the end, who we’re rooting for, what their motivations are, and why they are fighting each other all goes out the window as the movie abandons its own internal logic.
Abigail was directed by the Radio Silence team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who previously made Ready or Not, Scream V, and Scream VI. This one maintains the level of top-tier wink-nod horror filmmaking from their previous features, and there’s plenty of fun to be had, especially for unsuspecting or undemanding audiences. But it is a small step down from their earlier movies.
