Abigail star Dan Stevens breaks down the new horror movie's big twist: "It just felt like all bets were off"
Warning! This article contains major spoilers for Abigail. If you've yet to see the movie, and don't want to know anything that happens, turn back now!
Thanks to its pretty "spoiler-heavy" marketing, Abigail, the new horror comedy from Ready or Not and Scream directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, isn't quite as full of twists as genre fans may have hoped. Turns, though? It's got plenty. It is a vampire movie after all…
Starring Kathryn Newton, Dan Stevens, Melissa Barrera, and Alisha Weir in the titular role, the movie follows a ragtag team of criminals – each with their own special skill, and Rat Pack-inspired codename – as they kidnap the daughter of a billionaire. Their mission? To hold her hostage for 24 hours while their employer negotiates a hefty ransom for her safe return. Easy money, right? Well, it would have been… had Abigail not been a ballet-dancing bloodsucker.
Chaos and carnage ensues, as the group try to survive the night while their new fanged foe pirouettes around the halls in a bloodsoaked tutu – and, as expected from a Radio Silence movie, barely any of them succeed. In an unexpected, last-minute rug pull, the team's arsehole-of-a-leader, former NYPD detective Frank (Dan Stevens), even becomes the overarching baddie towards the end of the film as he's transformed into a vampire by his frequent collaborator Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), who's revealed to be the orchestrator of the ill-fated operation. Lambert's real plan was to have the Rat Pack kill his master Abigail, freeing himself of his undead curse. But things go sideways after he offers Frank the opportunity to take over the empire of Kristoff Lazar, Abigail’s mobster father, and bites him…
"I don't think I've been a vampire before. Have I? I don't know, but yeah, getting fangs fitted and all that kind of stuff was very exciting," Stevens tells GamesRadar+. "In this one, like with many vampire movies, there's a different personality that emerges from Frank when he's turned. I think we were tickled by the idea that, in our world, when people get turned they just become much more awful human beings. I mean, obviously, they're trying to kill people but Frank becomes an extreme piece of shit once he's a vampire,” laughs the Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire star. "It just felt like all the bets were off. 'Oh, you thought Frank was awful before, well he's really awful now', you know? He's absolutely despicable so that was really fun to lean into."
Frank isn't the only character who gets turned, either. Fairly early on in the movie, Newton's bratty tech-whizz Sammy gets nipped by Abigail during a brawl and eventually succumbs to the wound – though her switch sees Abigail's consciousness use Sammy's body to allow her to be in two places at once: another interesting fresh spin on the monster's mythology.
"It was so great to get to be a vampire. I love Halloween. I love dressing up, and so it felt like a dream come true," says the Lisa Frankenstein lead. "When you put that kind of costume on, you can really bite into a body. You feel it, honestly, I'm getting chills thinking about it. It's just exciting."
Vampire Sammy and Vampire Frank both wind up getting dispatched: the former having been exposed to sunlight, while the latter gets staked in the heart by Abigail and medic-turned-final girl Joey (Barrera). William Catlett's Rickles, however, is one of Abigail's very first victims, making his unexplored spark with Joey even more tragic.
"I didn't really talk to Matt and Tyler about it too much, but my thought process when I was reading the script was like, 'Okay, he's military background. My dad's from the military. Okay, I get this guy,' you know? And he'd seen a lot of different things. I felt like this was his last job. Like, 'I'm gonna do this one more time and I'll get paid and then it's off into the sunset.' But things take a drastic turn," giggles Catlett.
"It's one of those things like, if you're walking down the street and you lock eyes with somebody, you don't really know them, but you know them. Joey and Rickles was having that moment. You know, 'This could be something and if we survive this moment, then maybe we can have a beer a little later.'" If only he'd not had half of his face ripped off...
Abigail is in cinemas now. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies of all time, or our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
