Abigail

If you’re into over-the-top, blood-soaked, horror/crime comedy-thrillers, starring a bunch of great character actors and laced with pitch-black humour, Abigail is an absolute joy from being to end.

Premise:  A team of six anonymous criminals is put together by an underworld figure (Giancarlo Esposito) to kidnap the young daughter (Alisha Weir) of a wealthy man.  Tasked with guarding her for 24 hours while the $50 million ransom is paid, the group soon realise that they have bitten off more than they can chew.

Review:

I normally try to keep these reviews entirely spoiler-free … but the entire premise of Abigail depends on a massive twist that happens about halfway through the movie.  I’m not sure you could call that twist a “spoiler”, because it is literally all over the marketing and publicity for this movie … but just in case you’ve somehow got this far without knowing the secret about Abigail (played by Alisha Weir), look away now, because I think it would be a very interesting experience to watch this movie without knowing the twist, but – mild spoilers ahead – it’s really impossible to talk about the movie without discussing the twist at the halfway point.

Still here?  Great!  As 99.99% of the audience will already know before they see this film, the twist is that Abigail isn’t an innocent 12-year-old ballerina, she’s actually a monstrous vampire who is more than a match for her would-be kidnappers.  But despite the fact that Abigail is revealed as a vampire in all of the marketing for this movie, the film itself does a great job of keeping the reveal back until the characters themselves learn her secret, which only happens around hallway through the movie.

“…starts out as a cool AF, darkly comic crime thriller about a bunch of charismatic criminals…”

In this respect, Abigail really reminded me of 1996’s From Dusk Till Dawn, which is one of my all-time favourite guilty pleasure movies.  Both films start out as a cool AF, darkly comic crime thriller about charismatic criminals involved in a kidnapping, and then both films switch gears unexpected at the midway point and turn into delightfully over-the-top, gory, vampire action horror movies, in which the characters have to apply what they’ve learned from watching vampire movies to try to survive one.  Needless to say, as a lifelong fan of From Dusk Till Dawn, I was perhaps the target audience for Abigail – and I absolutely loved it.

Like From Dusk Till Dawn, the first half of Abigail does a great job of establishing its ensemble cast of characters – except in this case, they are all a bunch of unsavoury ne’er do wells.  The leader of the kidnappers is ‘Frank’ (all the kidnappers are assigned Rat-Pack-based aliases), played with charismatic menace by Dan Stevens.  It’s funny that Abigail has come out within a month of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, because in that movie Dan Stevens plays the wholesome, comic relief character, whereas in Abigail, he walks a fine line where you’re never entirely sure if the rest of the group should trust ‘Frank’ or keep their eyes on him.  ‘Joey’, played by Melissa Barrera, in particular seems wary of ‘Frank’ from the outset, as no one in the team put together by Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) have ever worked with each other before.

“…Alisha Weir gives a masterclass in how not to be typecast…”

But for me, the secret MVP of the cast may have been Kevin Durand, who plays the team’s muscle, ‘Peter’.  Kevin Durand is one of those character actors that you’ll probably recognise when you see him even if you don’t recognise his name – but here, he gets some of the movies funniest lines, as the not-particularly-bright ‘Peter’ struggles to keep up with what’s going on.  The rest of the team is comprised of ‘Sammy’, the computer hacker played by Kathryn Newton (who gets to exercise some of the horror/comedy skills that she demonstrated so well in the excellent Freaky), ‘Rickles’, the weapons expert played by William Catlett, and ‘Dean’, the driver played by the late Angus Cloud (who sadly passed away after filming this movie).

Playing the titular vampire ballerina is Alisha Weir, who was only 13-14 when this film was shot.  Until now, she was best known for playing the lead role in 2022’s Matilda: The Musical, but she’s almost unrecognisable here as Abigail, a role to which she brings genuine malevolence and a sense of danger.  If Matilda: The Musical marked her out as a child actor to watch, Abigail confirms that Alisha Weir is a straight-up actor to watch, and it’s a masterclass in how not to be typecast after getting your big break.

“…absolutely does not hold back on the violence & gore…”

The tone of Abigail is mischievous throughout, and in both the crime-phase and the vampire-phase there is plenty of dark humour and funny character dialogue (although it is played more seriously than, say, 2023’s Renfield, which was more overtly a horror comedy).  But Abigail also absolutely does not hold back on the violence and gore – in fact, it heightens it to darkly comic effect, throwing more blood at the screen than co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett did in either Scream 5 or Scream VI.  The film also toys with the vampire ‘rules’ from other movies, so that the characters are never entirely sure what really works, and what’s just movie BS.

It would be interesting to see what viewers who don’t already know that Abigail is a vampire will make of this movie, because the first half does play like a straight-up crime thriller riffing on the group dynamics of something like Reservoir Dogs, and a whole subplot about an underworld kingpin and his enforcer doesn’t really get any traction if you already know Abigail’s secret.  But equally, I know the reality of the situation is that many people wouldn’t have gone to see Abigail in the first place if it hadn’t been marketed as a vampire movie, so I appreciate that it is a Catch-22 situation.

“…playfully subverts the genre tropes…”

As with all ‘genre films’, if you don’t like vampire movies, Abigail may not be for you – but if, like me, you have a soft spot for the genre, and especially those that playfully subvert the tropes like From Dusk Till Dawn did, then this movie is likely to give you plenty to sink your teeth into.