A bright and obvious splatter, the new horror film “Abigail” follows a simple and proven recipe that requires a minimum of ingredients. Total time: 109 minutes. It features a mysterious child, a mild-mannered fixer, and six logically difficult criminals. Place them in an oversized pot with a few mice, creaky floorboards, and a spooky shadow. mix. Continue to simmer and stir until the stew is near boiling. After an hour, increase the heat until some of the meat has separated from the bones and is deep red throughout. enjoy!
This more or less sums up the film, a horror film that is serviceable enough to give you the occasional chuckle or wince, but it’s so un-aggressive and unambitious that it hardly seems worth complaining about. The film centers around the story of the title character (a fine Alisha Weir), an ostensibly self-centered 12-year-old ballerina, who is kidnapped one night by six genre people. Masu. Formally a group of underworld fodder from various underworlds (particularly played by Dan Stevens), these Scooby-Doo-esque giggling heads come with diverse skills, histories, and expiration dates, and their master His mission is to inflate a reed-thin story and die a tragic death.
Written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette, the filmmakers have crafted the story with their usual level of detail. Much of the film takes place inside a vast, labyrinthine mansion that looks like it was imagined by the amusement park’s designers by scanning old horror movies while reading picture books about the history of European aristocracy. A suit of armor sat by the front door, a bearskin rug on the floor, and an empty coffin in the corner, oddly enough considering the genre’s condition that it was abandoned. There is fresh garlic in the kitchen.
Giancarlo Esposito comes in, gives some orders, and immediately leaves the kidnappers alone with Abigail in the mansion, and there are some twitchy moments, such as waiting for her father to pay the ransom within 24 hours. There are parts. As this narrative stopwatch begins, the crew, which also includes Melissa Barrera, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, the hilarious Kevin Durand, and Angus Cloud (who passed away in 2023), joke and laugh. By posing and posing, grimacing and shouting, they manage to make a light appeal and are completely disposable. At one point, the filmmakers tried to play up her influences in shots of Agatha Christie’s 1939 mystery novel “And Then There Were None,” about a group of mysterious and offending people. Nod to one.
“Abigail” is said to be an adaptation of “Dracula’s Daughter” (1936), one of the horror films in Universal’s archives, several of which have been revived in some form. The press name-checks “Abigail” and checks off several vampire titles, but “Daughter” is not among them. There’s a good reason for this. This is because there is little that connects the two. It is a pity. The early films are really interesting. Gloria Holden plays a countess who preys on men and women alike and begs her doctor to cure her “horrible” condition. The film’s lesbian overtones make for a frustratingly tasteful text, with censors asking studios to avoid any hints of “perverse sexual desire”, but the film does not contain the countess’ He plays a complex villain and is definitely worth watching.
Abigail
Rated R for more than just gore. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. At the theater.
