ABIGAIL ** USA / Ireland / Canada 2024 Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. 109 mins
The vampire genre is running out of juice, with even tributes and parodies not making the bite anymore. Take 2023 as a case in point with Nicolas Cage playing an underwritten Count Dracula in Renfield and the vampire overlord sailing rough seas in the box-office bomb The Last Voyage Of The Demeter. Hope for the genre came from overseas with the Argentinian Netflix political thriller El Conde, a delightful monochrome treat that reimagined the country’s notorious dictator as an immortal vampire.
Maybe, Count Drac needs to rest and let his progeny indulge in reckless bloodbaths. Abigail, the new horror comedy by directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Ready Or Not and the last two Scream movies), shifts the focus from aging Transylvanians to a 12-year-old ballerina instead. The story is pretty straightforward, playing out as a standard kidnapping mission.
A ragtag bunch of crooks (anonymously assembled and codenamed Reservoir Dogs-style) are tasked with kidnapping the wealthy tutu-wearing heiress and holding her captive in a safe house for 24 hours. The only trouble is that these foul-mouthed Home Alone stand-ins don’t know that their target is a sharp-fanged creature of the night. Also, the safe house in question is a chandeliered Gothic mansion with enough space for a blood-soaked game of Hide and Seek. The darkly comic overtones of Ready Or Not are very much at play here.
But Abigail isn’t just a senseless vampire with an appetite for the red stuff. She’s also a manipulative brat who can turn one captor against the other, the ensuing blame game following a whodunit formula. While the finger-pointing kicks off with promise, the Agatha Christie-esque mind games get exasperating in the second half. If the Christie influence is not that apparent, the script even shoehorns a copy of “And Then There Were None” in the third act.
With each of the kidnappers carrying an emotional burden from their past, Abigail taps into their fears and hunts them down one by one. The human hunt seems predictable at first but makes way for such convoluted twists and turns that the film would leave you with a mixed taste in your mouth, much like a vampire guzzling down low-quality, infected blood. Okay, I will stop with the vampire puns now!
Screenwriters Stephen Shields and Guy Busick deserve credit for subverting familiar vampire tropes and cherishing past vampire literature and cinema in creating their very own vampiric lore. But the final plot twists play out in such a haphazard fashion that none of the intended drama plays out convincingly. Ultimately, Abigail ends up as an unabashedly bloody (we’re talking pools and pools) spin on its genre(s) relying a bit too heavily on its titular gimmick. Even with a young protagonist under the spotlight, Abigail does little to truly stand out from predecessors like Orphan and M3GAN.
With that being said, the performances are all on point. Special praise needs to be given to the delightfully wicked performance by Alisha Weir (the breakout star of Matilda: The Musical). While her metamorphosis into a vampire is both shock-inducing and chuckle-worthy, her character is a bit too overpowered for the plot. But the banter between the gang is good enough, chiefly led by Scream and Scream VI star Melissa Barrera and Downton Abbey alumnus Dan Stevens. While Barrera continues to redefine the modern horror scream queen with a more empowered, problem-solving approach, Stevens is just having fun squealing, screaming, throwing tantrums, and having a bloody good time (okay, that was the last pun).
Review by Shaurya Thapa