I can’t remember the last decent vampire movie I saw, so I thank the deities for abigail (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), which is a big gore with a complicated backstory. The film emerged as a remake of Dracula’s daughter, and was included as an entry in Universal’s Dark Universe horror franchise; But once that ill-fated idea went down the drain, the directing team of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (Ready or Not and the two most recent Shout films) took over and made the film under his Radio Silence banner. My expectations were low, since ShoutIt felt like a rehash and drowsiness of the silly Dracula movie. The last voyage of Demeter It took a while, but if anything can get an old cynic excited about vampires again, it’s abigail.ÂÂÂ
ABIGAIL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: We open what seems like a completely different movie. Not seriously. It’s a kidnapping thriller in which a group of misfit criminals break into a rich man’s mansion and steal his 12-year-old daughter for a $50 million ransom. It’s one of those Reserve dogsType jobs where none of the criminals know each other’s names so they don’t snitch on anyone, and they get nicknames and all that. Our protagonist is Joey (Melissa Barrera), who seems a little out of place with this group of monsters, probably because she is the real protagonist with big, soft, understanding eyes that she uses to look at the photo of her separated son. she. on her phone. She, too, is not thrilled to learn, moments before they burst in, that her target is a little girl. But there’s money to be made and a job to be done, and her part is to knock out the kid with an injection.
The others are more or less a bunch of crazy people: Frank (Dan Stevens) leads the team and wears glasses that tell us he’s as slippery and agile as a Ferrari gearbox. Peter (Kevin Durand) is a very muscular but slow-minded man. Rickles (Will Catlett) is the poker-faced sniper. Sammy (Kathryn Newton) is the daring hacker. Dean (Angus Cloud) is the getaway driver who has nothing but a couple of chiclets hanging around where his brain should be. They grab Abigail (Alisha Weir) and meet with the mastermind of the scheme Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) in a dilapidated mansion with a giant elevator cage as its centerpiece. I wonder if it will be useful in case someone needs it. “and decor ranging from antler-shaped lamps to crude taxidermy and crumbling old frescoes. No, really, fresh! I’m sure nothing bad has ever happened in this place. It’s a bit in need of repair, but after several thousand hours of work and exorcisms, it will be very cozy!
Being the good person around here, relatively speaking, Joey comforts poor little Abigail, who is still wearing her tutu from ballet rehearsal. Being the shitbird around here, and the specific breed of shitbird played by Dan Stevens, Frank threatens poor little Abigail with her gun and discovers that she is the daughter of a notorious billionaire who is rumored to be her He has a henchman. she capable of “tearing people apart like an animal.” That could, the key word here being “could”, explain how one of them ends up with his head separated from his body in a rather disgusting and hilarious way. And just when you thought this group of criminals had exchanged enough prickly jokes to get to know you, well, when people are fighting for their lives, they In fact getting to know yourself, especially your inside, and more, especially when that inside becomes the outside.
What movies will it remind you of?: It’s no secret that Abigail is the vampire around here, and that she likes to plié and jete while chewing up her victims (it’s in the trailers and all), so obviously the sequel needs to be ABIGAIL VS. M3GAN. ABIGAIL VS. M3GAN! someone needs to do ABIGAIL VS. M3GAN! I mean, why couldn’t he exist in a world that he gave us Freddy vs. Jason?
Performance worth seeing: Barrera is a great final girl. And Weir throws himself into the demonic role (it’s so funny to hear this adorable little boy spewing obscenities like a sailor who accidentally dropped the anchor on his toe). Stevens has his tremendously sordid moments and Durand offers a very well modulated comedy. But I have to go with Lisa Frankenstein herself, Newton, who kills a few one-liners and makes the most of the film’s craziest sequence.
Memorable dialogue: You haven’t lived until you hear Stevens joke, “Sammy, those are fucked.” onions“the idiot in charge of finding garlic to fight the vampires.
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: In retrospect, the best joke ever abigail So it starts off a little slow and dry and much like many other bad guy crime thrillers, then subtly turns into one of the most outrageous comedies of the year thanks to a collection of crazy performances and exquisitely timed bursts of pustulent. blood. Horror movies are often populated with characters that I like to call out one by one, because the monster, killer, or alien selects them one at a time, thus extending the plot into the feature film. But they rarely feature inpidual people with much personality. abigail is unique in the sense that you hate watching them die one by one, because it means they no longer exist to say and do hilarious things.
On the other hand, they die in such a gruesome and entertaining way that you’re too dumbfounded to mourn their death. The movie works absolutely within the confines of formulaic horror (put idiots in a creepy house and slaughter them), but embellishes the familiarities with some visual eccentricities, some fun and silly twists, and a script that sets its talent and tone at its launching point. to have success. abigail It’s a case where it’s not the material that counts but what you do with it, and Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin deliver the results with wit, a bit of suspense and some gloriously disgusting buckets of gore, just the way the grandmother. .
Our call: There are times when abigail It doesn’t make sense and it’s not a perfect movie, but I had a lot of fun watching it and I refuse to criticize it, so STREAM IT. Thank you.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
