Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Starring: Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin
Durand, Giancarlo Esposito, Angus Cloud
A format beloved of Poverty Row programmers of the 1930s and '40s was to
stick a disparate bunch of characters in an old mansion with some type of
monster on the loose. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and
Tyler Gillett's Abigail is so indebted to those creaky
but charming old b-movies that it's only lacking a scene in which a
character hides in a suit of armour. It's so besotted with its '30s horror
influence that it even employs Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' as a musical motif,
as of course did Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula. Abigail is essentially a '30s programmer with '80s gore. A
surefire crowd-pleaser for horror fans so?
Well, not quite. Abigail certainly delivers on its promise,
but it never lives up to its premise and there's none of the invention that
made the best horror movies of the '80s so much fun.
That premise is a doozy though. Six criminals are holed up in a secluded
mansion where they're asked to keep watch over Abigail (Alisha Weir),
the kidnapped ostensibly 12-year-old daughter of some ambiguous tech
billionaire. What they come to realise with grave consequences is that
Abigail is actually a centuries old vampire, and she's very, very thirsty
for blood.
As with their over-rated 2019 thriller
Ready or Not (which reworked 1932's
The Most Dangerous Game), Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett deliver everything you expect from
their latest film's high concept setup; the trouble is they don't give you
anything unexpected. If you're licking your lips at the prospect of a series
of outrageously staged kill sequences you'll be considerably let down. The
first death is a funny bit involving Kathryn Newton's ditzy Linnea
Quigley-alike teen hacker Sammy (all the criminals are assigned names based
on the Rat Pack) discovering a headless body, a gory update on just the sort
of gag you might find Willie Best involved in if this were made in 1938. But
the rest of the kills are uninspired and the film's pacing suffers greatly
from how unevenly they're spread out. Two characters are killed off
relatively early on but it takes an age for the rest to begin to be whittled
down.
Abigail is lacking in effective horror but makes up for it
somewhat with some entertaining comic performances. The highlights are the
always watchable Newton and the hulking Kevin Durand as Peter, a
hilariously dumb hoodlum, the type of character who would always be speaking
the words "Aww gee boss" if this had been made by Monogram in 1937. Playing
it straight, Weir is fantastic as the titular tween terror. I'm rarely
convinced when an Irish actor attempts an American accent but to my eras at
least, Weir's effort is flawless. She also manages to convince us that we're
watching a centuries old creature inhabit a child's body. Frankly, it's a
performance that's far too good for this movie. Despite their best efforts,
Dan Stevens and Melissa Barrera struggle to make anything of
their archetypal characters: the gang leader with a propensity for violence
and the ex-junkie who wants to reform her ways for the sake of her
son.
Poverty Row programmers were rarely great, sometimes good, often bad and
usually mediocre. Abigail is never great, sometimes good,
never quite bad and generally mediocre. There's just about enough to amuse
fans of this sort of stuff (of which I am most definitely one), but despite
the gallons of blood on screen, you'll be left thirsty for genuinely great
vampire thrills.
