A cavalcade of gushing pulses in irresistible Abigail
It’s time to marinate yourself in garlic, sharpen the wooden poles and keep an eye on the mirrors at home: the vampire Abigail is coming.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have in recent years established their names in the horror sky. The big breakthrough, the magical one Ready or Notbreathed life into the rusty cogs of horror comedy, and the duo also proved chillingly effective with their contributions to Scream– the franchise. Now the hit duo are leaving Ghostface to their grim fate, but there’s still life left in the meta batteries as they take on the vampire genre’s hot bubble bath of blood and eerie mansions.
I Abigail a squad of extremely competent professional criminals is recruited to make money from a kidnapping. The new colleagues are handpicked and to prevent leaks, the thug league knows nothing regarding each other. The victim: a poor, tender 12-year-old girl named Abigail. The kidnapping will make the gang of greedy men many millions of dollars richer by extorting money from the girl’s parents. Sounds like something a bunch of experts in the fine art of crime might fix before lunch, right? Well. Soon it will be revealed that Abigail is no “ordinary” girl, but rather an immortal, sadistic vampire who will stop at nothing to make meatloaf out of her perpetrators.
Today’s moral cake: think regarding who you kidnap. Photo: Universal Pictures.
“A genre-bending playhouse”
Hope you don’t feel like I spoiled the twist for you nowdear readers, but the fact is that I do not reveal more in my brief description of Abigails synopsis than the film’s PR material. All the trailers show that it’s a genuine vampire reel we’re dealing with, something I think gives me license to highlight that aspect in my review. Of course, this is not something Abigail is up to, but I would really like to share some harsh words with you Universal Pictures marketing, as the twist would have been really lovely to experience without prior knowledge.
Vampires pop up on the popular cultural radar every now and then and always manage to find new ways to sink their fangs into our pulsating jugular veins. Like the creature itself, the vampire is an immortal literary and cinematic figure that reincarnates according to the prevailing cultural and political winds. Abigail places itself firmly in a postmodern compartment where cemented conventions and mythologies are dismantled and played with, something the undersigned is very, very weak for. The fact is that Abigail is a genre-bending playhouse that cleverly pokes fun at the rules of both the vampire film and a variety of other subgenres.
The tone is consistently playful and cleverand also regarding the movie really does not suffer from a lack of hysterical violence, the directors let their characters breathe. We get to know the characters through their interactions with each other and the tactics with which they tackle the scenario’s increasingly absurd challenges. The directing duo Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet also show, once once more, their surgical precision between double-fold tans and brutal gore-filth. In the end, perhaps the comedy aspect outweighs the horror, but too Abigail fits this perfectly. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet also succeed in infusing genuine feelings into a material that does not directly breathe sentimentality.
Foto: Universal Pictures.
Melissa Barrera is superb
The ensemble also performs great deeds. Melissa Barrera keeps true to his habit of carrying the pathos of the splatter party on his shoulders and does so with gusto. Barrera belongs to the cream of the scream queens of her generation and i Abigail is she superb Dan Stevens seems to be enjoying himself fully as the film’s archangel and the other talents in the ensemble are almost flawless. However, I have to lift Alisha Weir, our Abigail of all, very high to the skies. The title role demands greatness from its poor child actor, and Weir dances and mutilates all the way to the bank. She alternates between innocent girl child and blood-gurgling sadist completely carefree. The casting of the title role is the film’s mortar that holds the other components together, and Weir’s performance does the job with flying colours.
The accolades are pouring in, as you might notice, because I really had an incredibly entertaining time with it Abigails genre flirting blood orgy. However, the film suffers from some scratches which mean that my long-awaited full score is not forthcoming. Abigail is too long, at least twenty minutes, and in the film’s third act, the very denouement, the directing duo lose their post-modern spark in favor of a more traditional showdown between good and evil. It’s still good, sometimes really good, but certainly doesn’t reach the first two acts’ lovely mix of screams and panic. A clumsily written scene in a cage irritates and chafes, as well as the fact that some jokes land crookedly, although the majority absolutely do their job.
In conclusion, I can, without the slightest quiver in my voice, recommend Abigail. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett continue their blood-red victory march through the snarky terrain of the horror-comedy and I’m already longing for the duo’s next work. Abigail is shamelessly entertaining and clever vampire mayhem from start to finish. The four is a fact!
