‘Abigail’ Review: Dan Stevens and Melissa Barrera in an Exuberantly Over-the-Top Vampire Horror-Comedy
For a significant portion of its running time, the new film from the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (better known as Radio Silence) plays like a hard-boiled crime drama. In its opening scenes, we see a rag-tag team of criminals prepare for and then commit the kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl. First seen dancing ballet by herself in an empty theater, she obviously comes from wealth, getting into a chauffeured limousine after her exertions. The kidnappers, who’ve dubbed her “Tiny Dancer,” manage to snatch her away and bring her to a secluded mansion, where they’re greeted by their mysterious organizer (Giancarlo Esposito), who gives them fake names inspired by the members of the Rat Pack (Frank, Joey, Dean, etc.). So far, so Quentin Tarantino.
That the mansion seems to come from a ‘30s-era Universal horror film, complete with suits of armor and numerous examples of frightening taxidermy, provides a clue that Abigail is going in a much different direction. And so it does, as (spoiler alert) the title character (Alisha Weir) turns out to be not an ordinary scared ittle girl, but a vampire. And clearly a very experienced and deadly one.
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It’s a deliciously silly conceit, and the filmmakers — whose previous hits include Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and Scream VI — run with it, demonstrating such an exuberant commitment to the genre that the movie industry may be facing a shortage of fake blood.
The screenplay by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick proves uncommonly smart for this sort of B-movie, as demonstrated by an early scene in which one of the kidnappers, the medic Joey (a fierce Melissa Barrera), makes bets with the others that she can guess their backgrounds merely by looking at them. She proceeds to provide instant analyses of hard-boiled former detective Frank (Dan Stevens); muscle-bound, slightly dim-witted Peter (an endearing Kevin Durand); goth-like hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton); spacey getaway driver Dean (the late Angus Cloud, whose screen presence suggests that he would have gone on to a major career); and stolid, ex-Marine Rickles (William Catlett). Thus, in five minutes we’ve got a read on the characters in what essentially becomes a haunted house movie. In this case, a house haunted by a seemingly fragile little girl who, when provoked, bears deadly fangs and displays superhuman abilities.
Once her true identity is horrifyingly discovered, the criminals respond exactly as most people would. “Okay, what do we know about vampires?” one of them asks, before they reasonably go looking for vampires, wooden stakes, etc. Unfortunately for them, Abigail proves more powerful and resourceful than most of the undead, revealing a particular talent for bargaining with her would-be captors before dispatching them. In the sort of little-girl voice that would be heartbreaking if you didn’t know she was capable of biting your head off.
Vampire movies are, of course, a dime a dozen (the most recent major studio example being The Last Voyage of the Demeter), but few are as gleefully anarchic as this one. For instance, I can’t recall any others in which a pre-teen Nosferatu, clad in a tutu, dances a pas de deux with a headless corpse.
Breathlessly paced and filled with the sort of black humor that makes it as much a comedy as a horror film, Abigail is wildly entertaining for most of its running time, although it becomes overly burdened with baroque narrative flourishes. The joy exhibited by the Radio Silence directors in delivering as much excessive gore as possible is matched by the terrific ensemble, who must have spent much of the shoot getting hosed down after takes. Take Stevens, for example. With his looks, he could easily be a leading man in Nicholas Sparks adaptations. Instead, he’s opting for entertaining character turns such as this one, in which he seems to have stepped out of an old gangster movie. And why not? After all, as a romantic lead he wouldn’t have the opportunity to exuberantly deliver such lines as “Okay, let’s go kill us a fucking vampire!”
None of it would work as well as it does without Weir’s mesmerizing turn in the title role. The young actress, who previously demonstrated her virtuosity in the film version of Matilda the Musical, is so frightening and sardonically funny as the pint-sized bloodsucker that Bela Lugosi must be turning over in his grave from jealousy. Assuming, of course, that he’s still in it.
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