Intensity 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette)
Abigail pits a group of misfit criminals against their captive, a little ballerina dancer named Abigail. Much to their surprise, she’s a powerful vampire. The movie is action-packed, with plenty of gore and laughs, but it is a station-to-station production that, while fun, telegraphs its moves well in advance. It’s empty calories, but for many fans, sometimes this is exactly what you crave.
With high hopes, I went into the world premiere of Abigail, which debuted at the Overlook Film Festival. This movie was one of my most looked-forward-to movies of 2024. It has a banger trailer (see below), and the history of Radio Silence includes Ready or Not, my favorite horror film of 2019. So, my expectations were high. I also fully understand the aspirations of this film. This would be more like Renfield than Let the Right One In in tone and texture. It aimed to entertain more than elevate the genre.
Did it meet my expectations? I can give that a qualified yes… but it didn’t quite earn the standing ovation that I had for Ready or Not. It carries a number of the trademark Radio Silence elements. Strong visuals. Stunning sets. Terrific action and splattery body explosions. The cast is a fun ensemble with strong, defined characters, though I think that perhaps they need to give the audience more credit than to do an exposition dump of character descriptions. That exposition repeats often in the film, and it was a bit of a blunt instrument.
The Cast:
- Aisha Weir plays Abigail, the titular tiny dancer vampire.
- Melissa Barrera plays Joey, the face of the crew. The only one allowed to talk with Abigail.
- Dan Stevens plays Frank, an ex-cop and the easily frustrated team leader.
- Kathryn Newton plays Sammy, the flighty tech expert.
- Kevin Durand plays Peter, the not-so-bright muscle for the crew.
- Angus Cloud plays Dean, a junkie getaway wheelman. In a sad twist of irony, Cloud died last year from a drug overdose. There is a nice dedication for him in the end credits.
- William Catlett plays Rickles, an ex-military sniper, and the lookout for this group.
- Giancarlo Esposito plays Lambert, the teams fence and contact.
A Quick Plot Summary
A team of criminals assembles for a kidnapping at a massive estate where the young ballerina, Abigail, lives. Despite some sloppy operations, the gang anesthetizes the girl and escapes in a plumbing box van. It’s all a little too easy, but this crew believes that their “elite” operational skills won the day. The kidnappers don’t trust each other. This is a cold call assembly of talent who haven’t worked together, so they assume names associated with the 60’s brat pack. (Check those names; you might recognize them.)
The crew is unaware of the identity of the child, though they had been promised seven million dollars each as a hostage negotiation price. They prepare for a long night, and while they should be on high alert for a job of this magnitude, most of them get drunk at the well-stocked bar. Curiosity gets the best of Frank. When he checks in on Abigail, he is stunned to discover that she is the daughter of Christof Lazar, a notorious crime lord. Consequently, Frank wants out. However, the promise of money remains too great for most of the team, so they decide to gut it out until morning.
The tides turn quickly when Dean is attacked by some mysterious force and is discovered decapitated in the kitchen. There is a group decision to cut and run, but the estate goes into lockdown mode, shuttering windows and barring the doors, trapping all inside. The mysterious force, of course, is Abigail. She now hunts the crew in the trap she has set for them. The predators have become prey and desperately seek a way out. All of the vampire tropes are in play, some of them more applicable than others. So, it becomes a crap shoot of an escape plan for the trapped criminals.
Evaluation
You could see the path forward for this movie from the moment the kidnapping scene began. The plot twists get bookmarked by character exposition. The characters ask the key questions out loud. Who is this girl, and why is she important? Who set the crew up for this trap? What are each of the character’s main motivations? What are the character flaws in each of the criminals that could jeopardize the mission? The characters answer many of these questions themselves or, at a minimum, debate the possibilities amongst themselves. So no need for the audience to scratch their collective head. The cast is already doing it for you.
The action in this movie pops. By the second act, the fighting is practically non-stop, with most of the characters suffering from some significant injuries that they eventually shrug off. Saving throws made! Since this is a Radio Silence production, you can expect some exploding bodies, and you get that with gusto. There is plenty of gore, but it is rather cartoonish and done to solicit cheers rather than screams. On that scale, it delivers.
I equate Abigail to a high-end fast-food burger meal with bottomless fries and shakes—think Red Robin. This is a well-made, high-calorie, low-nutrition horror meal. It feels great going in and is satisfying without triggering the urge to analyze the story too much. There isn’t a need to. What you see is what you get, and that’s not all bad. Comfortable comps for this movie in tone and pacing would be Alien Resurrection, Blade II, Predators, The Relic, and Renfield.
Give high acting marks to Kevin Durand, who gets all the best lines for being the team’s dimwit. Durant has tapped into the loveable, big, dumb, and funny guy that makes him endearing. Also, Aisha Weir does well in a difficult role. Young actors can struggle when trying to be menacing, and Weir makes for a very creepy little vampire. A bright acting future awaits Weir, which should help launch her into other good roles.
Conclusion
Abigail is a crowd-pleaser. It does target the widest demographic possible, and I think it will succeed here. The question will be how much of a marketing push Universal will put behind it. Last year, Universal didn’t heavily support two similarly placed films I liked, Renfield and Last Voyage of the Demeter. These films flopped at the box office. Positive reactions from horror fans couldn’t save them. If given a marketing push, it could succeed as a mid-tier hit like M3gan was last year. Abigail provides broadly entertaining fare for horror fans and non-horror fans alike.
One of the elements that you could see coming down the tracks was a big finale fight between characters that you would expect to be at odds, with Abigail as the material X factor. It is a big, set-destroying throwdown, but par for the course, it also goes a bit too long. When operating in the shadow of superhero movies and kaiju battles, the epic closing sequence is to be expected… with a similarly overwrought spectacular kinetic throwdown.
Did the film live up to my lofty hopes? No. But it is still entertaining enough that I recommend a big-screen viewing. Just know what you are getting into. It engages early, crackles with energy, has a spectacular series of fights, and is ready-made for a big bucket of popcorn and a large soda. It’s a celebration of empty-calorie entertainment, right?
The MPAA gave Abigail an R-Rating for language, gore, and violence. It earned that rating in spades. However, it is not a particularly disturbing movie and mature teens should be able to handle it just fine. Abigail will be in wide release on April 19 in theaters across the USA.
Review by Eric Li
