ABIGAIL (2024) is the new humorous horror-crime movie from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, a.k.a. Radio Silence, the team behind SOUTHBOUND, READY OR NOT, SCREAM (2022) and SCREAM VI. The screenplay is credited to Stephen Shields (THE HOLE IN THE GROUND) and the usual Radio Silence guy Guy Busick.
I enjoyed this one, it’s a fun movie, but it kinda seems like it was designed without considering how it would have to be advertised. In order to explain the premise the trailers had to reveal information you don’t get until surprisingly far into the movie. It feels weird how long it pretends we don’t know, and how much of a shock it seems meant to be when it happens. You can see how much more fun it will be for anyone who sees it by accident on cable or whatever other blind viewing opportunities may exist. So in case someone out there still has that possibility, I’ll follow the movie’s example in taking my sweet time with the set up and then I’ll warn you when to cut out.
An underworld figure called Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito, NIGHT ON EARTH) has put together a team of six criminals to kidnap a rich guy’s daughter and hide her in a remote mansion until the ransom is collected. Since they don’t know each other and he doesn’t want them to he code-names them after members of the Rat Pack: cynical tinted-glasses asshole Frank (Dan Stevens, THE GUEST), tragically-Elon-Musk-faced muscleman Peter (Kevin Durand, SMOKIN’ ACES), excellent but drugged out getaway driver Dean (Angus Cloud, Euphoria), young hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton, THE MARTIAL ARTS KID), ex-Marine sniper Rickles (Will Catlett, Black Lightning), and ex-army medic Joey (SCREAM and SCREAM VI star Melissa Barrera), who’s supposed to be the only one to talk to the girl, a young ballerina named Abigail (Alisha Weir, Matilda from MATILDA: THE MUSICAL).
After the actual kidnapping is done and they’ve made it to the hideout it seems like the rest of the job will be easy for them. Fun, even. There’s a full bar with high quality booze, so everybody’s hanging out and making drinks, except for Joey, who says she’s waiting until after she checks on the kid. I like the contrivance they use to tell us about each of the characters. When Dean brags that he’s good at reading people and guesses some people’s specialties and backgrounds, Joey scoffs, says he got them all wrong. She doesn’t want to tell him how, but Frank puts down a hundred dollar bill and says it’s hers if she can say one true thing about him. And of course she gives him a whole list. So it turns into everyone putting down whatever cash they have to marvel at Joey’s amazingly accurate guesses about their character bios. Never mind that nobody could really do it that well – that’s just her thing.
Later, when they realize it’s a liability how much they know about each other, Frank blames Joey – even though it was his idea, that he paid her money to do! So that tells us some more about Frank.
The most notable thing that she picks up on is that Frank used to be a cop, and he says that’s why he can tell she used to be a junkie. She has an emotional backstory, tries to keep the kid from worrying too much, takes off her blindfold, moves her cuffs to the front, stands up to the others (mostly Frank) when they’re about to go too far, so she’s a nice bad guy we can root for. It’s corny, but it works.
The gang haven’t been let in on who Abigail is or why she’s valuable, so Joey starts to worry when she implies her dad is some kind of dangerous person. Frank (who’s worked with Lambert before and trusts him) thinks Joey’s being stupid, but breaks the rules to storm in and question Abigail. When she says her dad is Kristof Lazar, he says they’re all fucked, and is so spooked he wants to leave and forget about his share.
Dean says Lazar is an urban legend; he wasn’t born when THE USUAL SUSPECTS came out so he doesn’t know to say “like Keyser Soze.” They’ve heard over-the-top tales about Lazar’s henchman doing crazy massacres, and it starts to seem more believable after someone sneaks in and rips one of their heads off without anybody else seeing it.
AND NOW FOR THE SPOILER THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW IF YOU’VE SEEN ANY ADVERTISING FOR ABIGAIL. The call is coming from inside the kidnapping. During a confrontation in Abigail’s room, the kid painfully pulls her hands through the cuffs, sprouts giant needle teeth and demonic eyes, and hisses at them, because she’s a fuckin vampire. It’s definitely played like a big shock. I remember the first time I saw FROM DUSK TILL DAWN it felt a little off like this too, because the whole gimmick is how much you would have no fuckin clue it was a vampire movie if you came in fresh. But not being a member of the under a rock community, I did not come in fresh. That doesn’t matter at all after seeing it a bunch of times, so maybe it shouldn’t matter for ABIGAIL either. But I feel like I have to note it.
Once the vampire shit kicks in there’s lots of goofy bloodletting, and she has fun incorporating her ballet moves into her hunting and taunting. Weir does a great job playing a bratty (but actually much older than us) little monster. Barrera is a pretty cool lead of the modern tough-lady-in-a-leather-jacket archetype, but the funny side characters really still the movie, particularly flaky rebellious rich girl Sammy and dumb lovable (but kinda evil) lug Peter. I think hazy burnt out doofus Dean is a funny character too, but partly because it feels like his authentic personality, so knowing Cloud has since died of a drug overdose dampens it a little.
Newton was good in FREAKY, but it was LISA FRANKENSTEIN that really made me a fan – she just had such an oddball way of inhabiting that character, her weird choices and movements, there’s something brilliant about her. So I was happy to see her here, and she’s really funny again. Being a horror movie I had to worry that she could be a character that gets killed off early, but I hadn’t considered that (SPOILER) she would get to transform into a vampire! She gets a mouthful of long jagged teeth to go with those cartoonish button eyes, she gets to keep being funny, it seems like the reason to do the role. In fact there are three different cast members where they seem to have gone, “Hey, you’re a great actor. Have you ever wanted to have a scene where you turn into a vampire? Sign here.”
It’s straight forward and it’s under two hours, but there’s plenty going on – trying to figure out which vampire rules apply, finding ways to keep her at bay, learning what she’s up to. She tries to make deals with various people – you know how persuasive those vampires can be.
There’s a part at the end that kinda plays like it’s supposed to be the Sean Connery cameo at the end of ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (spoiler for ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES) but I don’t know why this particular actor would be a big deal, so maybe not. But it made me think how funny it would be if at the end it turned out her dad was Nicolas Cage as Dracula. And I thought that without being aware that this was originally announced as a remake of DRACULA’S DAUGHTER (1936) so maybe that guy is supposed to be Dracula, the Sean Connery of literary characters. I know I speak for every single person here, reading or not reading, when I say that the 2017 version of THE MUMMY is pretty fun, rejected only because of mankind’s ignorance and the weird Pied Piper spell that Brendan Fraser once cast on all millennials, and that God will never forgive us, nor should He ever forgive us, for the cancellation of The Dark Universe. But with Heaven denied us I guess Universal has a pretty good alternate strategy of “just have different people make different monsters movies sometimes, if they want to, doesn’t really matter to me. In fact, change the name away from Dracula, make it unclear whether or not this guy is supposed to be Dracula, do you think I give a fuck? Do you think you can intimidate me? I’m a fucking globe. I keep spinning.”
Now that I’ve seen this and know that Radio Silence must be obsessed with groups of people being trapped in mansions together I’m surprised they didn’t do that in one of their SCREAMs. Maybe that would’ve been the third one they were gonna make before the production company wouldn’t wait for them to finish this one. Oh well. Series is dead to me anyway. If you’re only gonna see one of the Radio Silence mansion pictures, I’d say go with READY OR NOT. But this one is good for some chuckles too.
April 23rd, 2024 at 7:35 am
it kinda seems like it was designed without considering how it would have to be advertised. In order to explain the premise the trailers had to reveal information you don’t get until surprisingly far into the movie
I dunno, I feel like if blame for that is going to land anywhere, it should land at the marketing department. They see the movie, and can gauge how much a certain development is or isn’t supposed to be a major twist. And in turn, can construct a trailer that perhaps indicates there will be some sort of twist, perhaps even give the proceedings a foreboding, ‘horror’ atmosphere so the audience doesn’t feel completely bait-and-switched, but doesn’t completely tip it’s hand.