Posted in: Movies, Universal | Tagged: abigail

Abigail Directors On Creating The Teeth Of An "Apex Predator"

The directors of Abigail talk about how they wanted the teeth designed to make the titular character feel like an "apex predator."

Abigail is a project that feels like it came out of nowhere, but it looks like a lot of fun. Just the premise alone is enough to get people into the theater to see some as buckwild insane: "Dracula's ballerina daughter absolutely wrecks the people who kidnapped her." The cast is pretty good also, and so far, it sounds like everyone involved is trying to make a monster movie unlike anything we've seen before. It's not just because the monster is a little girl in a ballerina outfit, that is, the window dressing, but they want to ensure the audience knows that Abigail is an apex predator. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are directing the film, and Gillett spoke to Empire about Abigail's design and, specifically, her teeth.

"We talked about the teeth a lot," he says. "We wanted them to look more primal and animal than usual vampire fangs. Abigail's are a kind of teeth on top of teeth – like a shark's mouth. Those apex predators, when they open their mouth, you see they're designed to inflict as much damage as possible."

It's going to be hard for anyone to see Abigail and not make the comparison to M3GAN, which came out in 2022 and was a hit in the way that horror dreams are made of. Gillett, however, knows that the comparison is coming and explains, "We're huge M3GAN fans, and Abigail has that same fun, campy [tone] – but it's also very R-rated. It's not afraid to go places you're maybe not sure you want to go." This is a vampire movie, and you don't get a vampire movie without a lot of blood. However, Gillett wanted to ensure the audience could feel the blood on them as much as it was coating the actors on the screen. "Our thing with blood is: it always has to feel viscous," explained Gillett. "The minute it feels thin, it's not interesting. We want it to stick to you." You go from good to great horror by getting that physical reaction from your audience, whether it is the heavy atmosphere of dread or the racing heartbeat that comes after a good jump scare. It's unclear whether Abigail will be good or bad, but seeing that people are still breathing new life into genres older than most of the audience is fun.

Abigail: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

Children can be such monsters. After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they're locked inside with no normal little girl.

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022's Scream and last year's Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

The film is produced by William Sherak (Scream franchise, Ready or Not), Paul Neinstein (Scream franchise; executive producer, The Night Agent), and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Scream franchise) for Project X Entertainment, by Tripp Vinson (Ready or Not, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and by Radio Silence's Chad Vilella (executive producer Ready or Not and Scream franchise). The executive producers are Ron Lynch and Macdara Kelleher. Abigail will be released in theaters on April 19th.

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