Abigail

Home Alone, if it’s a straight comedy, Let The Right One In when you realize said girl is a vampire. Abigail is a horror film with comedic elements, a not-to-hard task to accomplish when a twelve-year-old girl tears her way through grown men four times her size. By the time the credits roll, if you aren’t laughing, this might not be the right film for you.

Initially intended to be a more direct adaptation of Dracula’s Daughter in line with The Dark Universe, in line with the Tom Cruise-led The Mummy. In fact, several films were internally tied to that project, with the singular goal of forming a cinematic universe, such as The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, and The Wolfman. Ultimately, The Invisible Man was conceptualized by Elizabeth Moss and Oliver Jackson-Cohen in leading roles. Still, it was unrelated to the hastily canceled Dark Universe franchise. The same would prove true for Abigail, which was repurposed into its standalone story, with Alisha Weir playing the titular character. This was a good thing because Abigail proved to be quite an ingenious, never mind hilarious, film in its own right, unburdened by what had been laid out in The Mummy.

While Abigail (Alisha Weir) is the title character, and the plot centers on her kidnapping, the movie itself spends its first act focusing on the people who have kidnapped her. Perhaps the executives and the marketing team behind the film felt that they could not properly explain the film without revealing the main twist, that Abigail is a vampire and the true threat. Some films can build anticipation by dropping the big reveal in the trailer, and watching it lay out her ploy to decimate the would-be kidnappers is one of the primary reasons I was seated in my local theater on opening night. On the other hand, the movie proper plays coy with the reveal, implying that it could be one of them or another mysterious figure who works with Abigail’s father (Kristof Lazaar – a late arrival, played by Matthew Goode), known only as Valdez.

What makes Valdez such a threat in the criminal underworld is the fact that he once killed three informants in a locked room on the twenty-third floor of a high-rise hotel under the heavy guard of the police – nobody knows how Valdez did it, just that he did. The mystery permeates the film, driving the characters to the brink as they try to survive once the bodies fall.

As a group, six primary kidnappers work under Lambert’s direction (Giancarlo Esposito). When they arrive at an ancient manor after having kidnapped Abigail, to ensure that nobody can rat the others out, Lambert assigns them nicknames, and what little we learn about them comes through our lead, who uses deductive reasoning on each of them – ironically dooming any chance of their escaping the manor. Joey (Melissa Barrera) is a former military medic and recovering drug addict and the central protagonist of the story. She shows actual compassion toward Abigail and is the ‘face’ assigned to keep an eye on her, the only one who should, at any point, enter the room they have chained Abigail into.

Rickles (Will Catlett) is a marine sniper who abides by his own moral code, designated as the overwatch for the manor to warrant that nobody crosses the threshold. Sammy (Kathryn Newton) is a thrill-seeking hacker, frenetic, fashionable, and hilarious; her background as the child of a wealthy family who broke out of the bubble she had been raised in for a challenge is a highlight of the film. Peter (Kevin Durand) is the ‘muscle’ of the group, not entirely dumb, but not overly smart at the same time.

Finally, we have Dean (Angus Cloud in one of his final posthumous released works), the talented, sociopathic getaway driver. Together, they are tasked with keeping watch over Abigail for one night until the ransom demand is made and paid by one Kristof Lazaar – a name that instills immense discord amid the group.

Their dynamic begins easily enough, and the film makes it clear that none of them have worked together beforehand, with “Frank” throwing together a new group every time he handles a task like this. Whether their reputations preceded any of them is up for you, as the viewer, to decide – but they use their respective skills in the first ten minutes to execute a flawless kidnapping. The later reveal that everything was preplanned against them doesn’t undermine that fact – Sammy could easily hack into the security system, and Dean effortlessly secured their escape. The only aspect of their plan that was clearly a setup is the actual kidnapping of Abigail. The movie never fully clarifies if their go-to method, a paralytic injection, was effective or if she was merely playing them.

The true reveal that this was a setup is revealed later in the second act. After that, the main twist, which was not highlighted in the trailer beyond a few brief clips that are easy to miss and misconstrue, comes as the final villain. As a recently released film (one year still counts), I won’t relay that here in this review, but it was a hilarious twist.

By the time the third act begins, the surviving characters are at their wit’s end, debating how they handle Abigail – with Sammy point blank asking what kind of Vampire they’re even dealing with. After all, Twilight and Interview with the Vampire follow very different rules and grant vastly different abilities. While Vampire lore is not explored in immense detail, Abigail displays several unique powers throughout the film. Alongside the standard package of immortality, supernatural strength, durability, and speed, she can fly and puppeteer others she has bitten, turning them into a lesser form of Vampire. The true depth and breadth of her abilities are revealed, but by the time the twist comes and a newborn Vampire tries to get the better of her, all they have at their disposal are the standard gifts. The cool stuff comes with age.

With its hard-R rating, it doesn’t shy away from creative kills unless the point is to highlight the mystery of what happened. This gives its first act a more ethereal feel to its latter two acts, where the gloves come off and the fangs come out.