Abigail

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, from Radio Silence, deliver their tried and tested recipe once again. Why change something that works. Here we have a group of thieves who kidnap a little girl and are tasked with guarding her for 24 hours in a huge mansion, but what seems like an easy job soon will cost them their lives – they have no idea whose daughter Abigail is. A very likeable cast (I enjoyed the original introduction to the characters, where Melissa Barrera uses details to identify everyone like Sherlock Holmes), the big surprise is Kevin Durand, who is a very funny insert throughout the film, and it was nice to see Dan Stevens as well. The film has a very fast pace, nice visuals, effective jokes, it's decently suspenseful, there a few twists and turns at the end, and it's also decently gory (the house ends up painted in blood from the roof to the basement, so evil can't be pissed) The final explosion was literally a gore epic!!! Too bad the atmosphere doesn't work much and some of the vampire rules change to serve the script, but never mind that, it's the cool ride that they promised, and delivered. Quite possibly the best Vampire movie of recent years? And if you doubt about it, give me a better choice. 8/10. (04/26/2024)

It's exactly what you imagine it will be. I must add, however, that the running time is quite unwarranted with such a simple plot, revealed by the trailer and synopsis. In fact, there are zero surprises here, and many elements look very familiar in the filmography of these filmmakers. I have nothing against filmmakers repeating schemes and ideas that have worked for them before, but I'm a little worried whether Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have run out of steam as writers. Either way, Kevin Durand should be cast more often and in bigger productions! (05/26/2024)

I usually enjoy Dracula themes, but this one really missed the mark for me. Radio Silence basically rehashed their excellent Ready or Not, but this formula doesn't work as well with more annoying characters and a vampire twist. Abigail feels like a stale mess, and not even the excellent Dan Stevens could save it. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett will need to seriously impress with their next project to make up for this disappointment. (07/14/2024)

As decent popcorn cinema entertainment, Abigail is adequate, but as anything above that, not so much. The directing duo have already shown with Scream VI and Ready or Not that they are no strangers to the craft and can make a fine thriller with no problem, but they've also shown that they're not ready for anything better, more shocking, and the same goes for Abigail. This film especially benefits from its originality (a bunch of bad guys locked in a house with a vampire hunting them down one by one - that something we haven’t seen before ) and also from a nice cast, Kevin Durand, Kathryn Newton and Angus Cloud are all familiar faces and definitely good. The film is not lacking in entertainment, the humour also works at times and I actually had a pretty good time in the cinema. But all that until the "finale", where the directors literally pulled their brains out and for some reason felt the need to end the film with a total shitfest where nothing made sense anymore, pulling the "vampire" rules out as they pleased (once someone goes in for the kill, the second time they don't, once someone gets "infected", the second time they don't...). Objectively, it's pure average marred a bit by a really bad ending that makes you feel they had no idea how to wrap up the film and just ran out of steam. Too bad. (04/19/2024)

If you watch the trailer of Abigail before the screening, you'll be revealed on one major plot twist, but the film still has a few more surprising aces up their sleeve, especially in the final third. The central motif of an ambiguous cat-and-mouse game bears a strong resemblance to previous pieces by the creative duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, but this time the bloody murder mystery is given a supernatural twist. I haven't seen Ready or Not, but I really enjoyed the last two Scream films, especially for breaking the boundaries of the genre, flirting with them and playing with audience expectations. Abigail rides a similar wave, featuring more than one good allusion to the genre or pop culture, yet the film as a whole failed to engage and entertain me as much as the fifth and sixth Scream did. The big stumbling block for me was some of the largely unlikeable characters and their theatrical badass acting. Alisha Weir, on the other hand, was bloody charming and I'm curious to see what direction her career will take. (05/02/2024)