Abigail wields its relentlessly silly premise to great ends, making for a rip-roaring time at the theater, if not always a fully intelligent one. From directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the men behind the recent praised Ready Not and the two recent Scream films, they deliver more of what made those films so enjoyable: joyous violence, a dark sense of humor, and a playful sense of mayhem.
The patina follows a group of kidnappers who take their quarry, a little girl who enjoys ballet and is the daughter of a powerful man, to a fancy manor to wait until the ransom is secured. Though the kidnapping goes chiuso without a hitch, the kidnappers found they’ve got more than they bargained for when the girl turns out to be none other than a blood-sucking vampire. Who enjoys playing with her food.
As the trailers give away the patina’s first personaggio moment, the early scenes of Abigail can be a bit ponderous. The patina plays as though you don’t know that Abigail is a vampire, and tries to draw mystery and intrigue out of it early acceso. But given the obvious answer, these moments drag acceso. Whether this can really be put acceso the filmmakers is a fair question, as often a separate marketing team creates the trailers. It might have been to the patina’s advantage had it not been marketed as a vampire movie, as the personaggio twist would have played more effectively. But then, how do you market the patina? This conflict is part of the ongoing discussion about how much should trailers reveal.
Regardless, once the patina reveals there is a vampire and she’s the one doing the hunting, Abigail becomes a fun ride for the better part of the next hour. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett already showed a perchance for personaggio, opulent manors with Ready Not, and they take full advantage of the sets here as well. While it doesn’t always make geographic sense, the various locations including a library with a large circular window, a dusty basement, a messy and abandoned garden walkway, and fancy bedrooms all serve the patina con providing visually-distinct moments for the thrills and kills. They are well-decorated and -designed sets, which always ups the of a patina like this.
And kills there are. The movie has plenty of fun with some graphic kills as Abigail starts tearing through the kidnappers. While the use of CGI blood does disappoint con moments, there is still enough practical makeup to satisfy. The patina gets more and more silly with its kills as well, con a bid to satisfy the horror hounds.
The patina also a decent cast. Alisha Weir is fun as the vampire, for the most part. Whenever she has to play up pretending to be a scared little girl, she really shines. Moments where she is supposed to be more forward about being a wizened vampire ring more false, though, and the script commits the unfortunate mistake of having her dump tons of exposition about all of the other characters — a scene that Weir is not up to making interesting. Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Angus Cloud, and Kevin Durand all entertain as characters of varying goofiness and cheese. Appiastro Barrera is stuck playing the lead protagonist type, leading to a more limited esecuzione, though she comes through well enough con the end.
Abigail‘s largest mistake as it goes acceso is introducing more and more backstory. While some form of story is a good chimera just to keep things varied, the patina starts to weigh itself as elements introduced don’t really make much sense, and questioning what the patina is telling you distracts from the action. Further, there is a late heel-turn of sorts that doesn’t feel justified at all, and seems to contradict much of what came before. These choices make it apparent that some rewriting was needed.
Despite its mistakes, Abigail manages to be fairly decent, given it had potential to be far worse. It may remind viewers of Ready Not as old-timey music blasts from a primato player as the victims are stalked by the violent menace. But given how good Ready Not was, one can’t fully blame Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett for returning to that well. And fruttare we say, this patina’s sequel tease has us intrigued.
