‘Abigail’ Review: Pirouette with a Vampire

Abigail, the latest baroque bloodbath from directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka Radio Silence), feels familiar. Too familiar, in fact. It’s not just the set-up of a group of shady characters who don’t know each other forced to keep watch over a mysterious kidnapping victim in a remote manor house for one night, which combines several tropes from different genres. It’s the look and feel of the film, which recalls the duo’s previous feature, Ready Or Not. The pair has made two Scream films since Ready or Not, and Abigail feels like they engineered it to replicate that film’s sick, spirited high concept after having to suppress their more twisted sensibilities in the franchise world for the past couple of years. Many elements that made Ready Or Not stand out are present here: The old manor house, the relatively small number of characters who are all either predator or prey, the golden candlelight filter, and most notably, the geysers of blood. All of these elements mark Abigail as belonging to the same bloodline as Ready Or Not, practically begging audiences to compare the two. It’s not a comparison that does Abigail any favors, unfortunately. The two films may share an aesthetic, but where Ready Or Not’s eat-the-rich satire gave its fun and games a nasty kick, Abigail is a more straightforward genre exercise that lacks the extra attitude that made the prior film so spicy.

Abigail takes its name from a cute little girl (Alisha Weir) whom we first meet dancing to “Swan Lake” in an empty auditorium. In short order, we also meet the group of nameless criminals who kidnap her: The kindly medic with a kid of her own (Melissa Barrera), the sharpshooter lookout (William Catlett), the muscle with a small brain but a big heart (Kevin Durand), the pothead driver (Angus Cloud), the hacker (Kathryn Newton), and the self-styled leader (Dan Stevens). The kidnapping itself goes smoothly, but when the man who hired them (Giancarlo Esposito) tells them to wait with the girl at a remote manor house until morning, it doesn’t take long before one of their party winds up with their head torn off. What they don’t know, but soon find out, is that Abigail is no normal girl; she’s a vampire who has locked them in with her, all the better to play with her food before she eats.

What makes the film work, even in its duller moments, is the cast. Every character has been perfectly cast with someone capable of bringing a distinctive personality, a necessity when your characters are walking clichés like these. It’s fun to watch the kidnappers interact with each other because of the big personalities on display, and they bounce off each other beautifully. Barrera gets the most dramatic backstory, and she smartly modulates her steeliness to delineate her character’s motivation in any given moment. Stevens continues his flawless run of cinematic oddballs, adopting a “Queens” accent and nerdy glasses to give his character a nice-guy façade that melts away with sickening swiftness when threatened. Newton’s daffy energy is electric, especially in her scenes with Cloud, who can get laughs from even the most banal lines.

Weir has the titular role, though, and she owns the film effortlessly. Equally believable as a frightened child and as a cunning, sadistic vampire, the young actress has the ability to turn her smile from friendly to creepy in a snap. The makeup department helps her, lightening her eyes and skin and giving her some truly gnarly teeth. Instead of traditional, smooth vampire fangs, Abigail’s teeth are jagged and rough, looking like they could tear a hole in just about anything. They’re the element most responsible for her looking as terrifying as she does, especially in close-ups. Weir’s contributions can’t be understated, though, as her physicality is a key element of many of the film’s most outré moments – most notably her waltzing with a beheaded corpse.

Part of the problem with Abigail is that there’s a lot to get through before the big reveal of Abigail’s true nature. It starts off well enough, with expository dialogue cleverly threaded through a scene that observes character dynamics through a game that feels like a Drag Race reading challenge. After that, though, there are several false starts and red herrings, and not nearly enough fun before the film’s halfway point, when Abigail finally frees herself from her handcuffs and bares her fangs for all to see. A vampire in the body of a young ballerina is the movie’s only hook, and it’s such a good one that it would obviously be front and center in the marketing campaign. The film doesn’t seem to be in on the secret, though, playing completely straight until the big reveal, which it treats as a giant revelation. Instead of winking at the audience throughout, Abigail is essentially a locked-room mystery slasher for the first half and a horror-comedy for the second half, which would work if they ensured that audiences wouldn’t know the “twist” going in. That’s not what happened, though, and the film’s pacing in the first half suffers because of it.

Once Abigail the vampire is unleashed, the film’s pacing picks back up, and things get a lot more entertaining. The dirty thrill of seeing a little girl go to town on this group of would-be kidnappers is undoubtedly a significant part of that, but the film revels in Abigail’s blood-soaked sadism in a way that’s compellingly fun to watch. The sheer amount of red dye no. 5 also contributes. People don’t just die in a Radio Silence film; they explode in a giant burst of viscera that paints the entire set deep red. This is the one area where Radio Silence builds on their previous work, making these bursts of blood even bigger and funnier than the highly memorable ones at the end of Ready Or Not. Unfortunately, Abigail’s script, by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, lacks not just the satirical bite of Ready Or Not but its consistency of tone. The film feints towards being a post-modern spin on vampire movies, like when Newton’s character responds to Barrera’s question of how to kill vampires by asking what kind of vampire they’re dealing with (“Anne Rice? True Blood? Twilight?”) because they all have different lore. Nothing really comes of this, though, other than one scene of trying several different ways of killing Abigail to figure out which works. The film doesn’t have enough cleverness to sustain these more self-aware moments, the film’s most enjoyable scenes that don’t involve vampiric violence. It’s a shame. Abigail could have been a bloody blast, but instead, it’s more of a bloody blob – kinda fun to look at but amorphous and misshapen.

Grade: B-

Universal Pictures will release Abigail only in theaters on April 17.