PREMISE
After a group of criminals kidnaps the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.
THE GOOD STUFF
ALISHA WEIR- Really impressive stuff. Abigail is not just some typical horror monster figure. She is menacing, and funny at times, she talks trash, she plays mind games, and she is as brutal as horror monsters typically are. Weir also does the numerous fight sequences that she’s in in this movie pretty well on top of everything. I do my best not to overtly criticize child performances in movies when they are bad. However, when they are this good I cannot help but to give overwhelming praise.
Yes, I know that good kid performances happen all the time. Yes, I am aware that there are good kid performances in horror movies… But not like this. Alicia Weir holds down this movie and never lets up. Really impressive stuff.
THE CREW- The casting for this movie is super impressive. You got world-class character actors like Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, and Giancarlo Esposito. You got fresh-faced scene stealers like Catherine Newton, Melissa Barrera, and the late Angus Cloud. Every one of them gets a good amount of time to chew up a scene or two and it all works. There’s great chemistry throughout this film, and the cast makes it a lot more fun than it could have been if even one of them didn’t fit with the rest of the group. Again, an amazing casting job with this film.
RADIO SILENCE- The filmmaking collective known as Radio Silence are elite horror filmmakers. I’m saying that while acknowledging that I vehemently detested the last two scream movies that they made. (Mostly for where those films fit in terms of the franchise itself) Outside of those two films Radio Silence has made a very underrated horror film by the name of southbound, and one of the better horror films of the previous decade, and one of the better horror comedies of all time (challenge me on this if you dare) called ready or not.
When Radio Silence wants to make something original, they knock it out of the park. Personally speaking, given the quality of this film, I’m looking forward to the next Radio Silence horror film just as much as I am to any current premier horror filmmaking director in the game.
THE BAD STUFF
REWRITING THE RULES- At one point in this movie, the question “How do you kill a vampire?” Is asked. The immediate response to this is “What kind of vampire are we talking about?” The audience laughed when they heard this question in the theater I was watching it in… But it is a fantastic question to ask. What kind? Perhaps a Twilight vampire? A true blood vampire? Something from Buffy the vampire slayer? Fright night? Lost boys? Dracula? There is no kind of creature feature that has had its monster-killing rules rewritten more than the vampire film. According to this film there are only TWO ways. And because the plot is what it is, they just so happen to be the two most inconvenient ways of doing so.
I couldn’t help but to think that if this movie actually followed the Bram Stoker rules of how to kill a vampire, then there were plenty of opportunities for these characters to do exactly that, and it’s hard to not notice it.
A WINDOW- I’ll be very careful not to spoil anything here but I will just say this: This is a film about a group of individuals trapped overnight in a barricaded house with a vampire. They are armed. And on a couple of occasions, all those characters acknowledge a window that is uncovered and inside the house. And nobody does a f****** thing.
THE UGLY STUFF
Not a thing.
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This movie works in so many different ways. It laughs at itself, but not to the point of being satire. It’s excessively bloody, but always done to a comedic effect, or to show off how strong Abigail is. It’s got a lengthy running time for the type of movie that it is, but it doesn’t waste a single minute. This is well-written, well-paced, wonderfully acted, funny, and fun.
It’s a breath of fresh air for a guy like me who has come to have a certain type of prejudice towards American horror films as a whole. This is one of the better films of 2024 so far.
ABIGAIL is in theaters now
