Review: Abigail

Directors:  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Stars:  Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand

I’m 40 years old. Many of my nearest and dearest friends have spent the better part of the last decade producing varying numbers of children. This is just the way of things. Something most people aim toward. The happy (or happy enough) stable majority who love kids and are strengthened by the bonds of family. Fortunately for those of us outside the norm – and with a taste for wicked genre cinema – there’s a dependable stream of movies that portray kids as literal monsters. From Orphan to M3GAN, those of us with our taboo disinterest, distrust or disgust of the young can gets our vicarious kicks out of seeing them reconfigured as the nightmare abominations we secretly assume that they are.

Enter Abigail.

Abigail is a film of pretenses, where true selves can be as dangerous as the image any given character chooses to project. It opens gung-ho with the kidnapping of it’s titular ballet brat (Alisha Weir), absconded from a high-tech family home by a gang of mercenaries corralled together by the mysterious Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito). In order to maintain anonymity between his hires, Lambert doles out nicknames wryly based on the notorious Rat Pack (suggesting a double-meaning of the ‘rat’ part to come).

Thus we have the Siouxsie-esque Joey (Melissa Barrera), brainless muscle Peter (Kevin Durand), techy teen Sammy (Kathryn Newton), doper wheelman Dean (the late Angus Cloud, RIP), cagey and bespectacled Frank (Dan Stevens) and ex-military… Don Rickles (William Catlett), cooped-up together for 24 hours at a mansion fortress to guard a kid that’s worth millions while Lambert collects the ransom.

But just as this pack of criminals have plenty to hide behind their code names, so Abigail herself is hiding a deadly secret, one that the marketing for the movie has lamentably spoiled for all-comers. Still, enter into Abigail in the spirit intended – and with any advance warning blocked from your mind – and you’ll be heartily entertained by the carnage that unfolds.

There’s a great sense of familiarity about the latest from Radio Silence boys Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, with its old-world estate setting and hunters-become-the-hunted dynamics, and one could quite readily pair it with their beloved 2019 breakout hit Ready or Not for a popcorn gobbling, tongue-in-cheek, decidedly gloopy double-bill. In the interim, of course, they’ve helmed the last two Scream revivals, and from there they bring a) greater experience and b) Melissa Barrera, hoisted out of a franchise train-wreck and here to show – simply and confidently – that she’s a genre movie mainstay and one hell of a charismatic lead.

With an array of facades to crack, Abigail beds down in character work for a while, and the cast are pitch-perfect. This motley crew is immensely likable, adhering to a number of stereotypes (Durand is out-Baustista-ing Bautista here) and playing them with aplomb. Even Angus Cloud draws something appealing out of Dean’s addled nonsense and awkwardly played affection for Sammy. Ace in the pack – unsurprisingly – is Dan Stevens, who is positively transformative as Frank, charting a course from nervy outsider to all-out badass (his character’s real name, by-the-by, feels like an Easter egg hat-tip to some old colleagues of these filmmakers). Between this and Godzilla x Kong, Stevens is having a banner year, and we still have Cuckoo to look forward to.

All of this is talking around the twist that’s already been spoiled; that Abigail herself is a centuries-old vampire and the set-up is a double-cross so she can spend a night and a day toying with her prey before taking bloody satisfaction. Thanks to over-exposure a decade or so ago by the twin titans of Twilight and True Blood, it feels like a long minute since vampires have been in vogue, but Abigail could pull a revival all on its own. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s brand of beastie has perhaps most in common with the feral, piranha-mouthed stalkers of 30 Days of Night, and once the teeth are out Abigail bathes itself in the vino. This duo’s fondness for reducing doomed characters to exploding blood bags (ala Ready or Not) hasn’t worn out its welcome yet…

Stacked with great lines and clownish scenarios (those onions…), Abigail is a hoot, designed and executed to provide entertainment from start to finish. I was looking at the disparity between my Most Respected movie favourites and my Most Watched over on Letterboxd recently. There’s a lot of overlap, granted, but much as I admire something like Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard or Michelangelo Antonio’s L’Eclisse, its middling Friday the 13th sequels and easy chuck-ons like Happy Death Day that pepper the latter list most keenly. Abigail is a sturdy future addition to a that Most Watched pile, having the feel of a regular rental choice from back in the days of VHS action/horror hybrids.

It ain’t perfect. With so many showboating characters to enjoy, its Abigail herself that gets the relative short shrift (though young Weir really takes a bite out of the opportunity). Double-crosses and cagey deals stack up so high that – along with all those identities – it can be tough to keep a track of who you can trust on the initial pass. And the third act goes on a bit, generating a kind of climax-fatigue that a tighter edit or some story trimming could have alleviated. A mystery guest at the finale doesn’t hit with quite the force it could have, mainly because it only hammers home the movie’s already well-struck recurrent theme of absentee parents. Plus, if you’re going to tee-up the appearance of Tom Hanks in act one, anyone less than that is going to feel underwhelming in act three.

Still, the headline is another hit (hopefully) for Radio Silence. Proof that neither they nor Barrera need the dying fumes of a flailing franchise to keep their motors running. I don’t know if my local multiplexes are representative of a greater pattern, but there seems to be some reticence to program Abigail in confident (or even sociable) time slots, so it’s quite possible this one will struggle to find the box office it deserves. But Abigail is doing no-one’s reputation any harm.