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Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review, Universal | Tagged: abigail, radio silence
Abigail Review: The Marketing Spoils A Bloody Good Time
By the time everything in Abigail is coming to a fever pitch, it's like we're watching a completely different film from the one we started with. While that change could have been fun, instead, the transition felt clunky.
Article Summary
- 'Abigail' suffers from marketing that spoils its mysterious plot twist.
- Comedic elements emerge later, in contrast to the initial thriller vibe.
- Alisha Weir shines, but Kathryn Newton's talent feels underused.
- The film's tonal shift feels unearned, lessening overall impact.
Abigail has potential but seems kneecapped by its marketing. The film is written and structured as if we don't know what Abigail is, rendering the entire first act nearly meaningless.
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Summary: After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl.
Sometimes, it feels like the people hired to do the marketing for a movie aren't told anything about the structure or the writing of the film they are trying to market. This can lead to some fundamental dissonance between what you know, secondhand, from the trailers and the teasers and what the characters in the film are supposed to know. It appears that Abigail might be another victim of this. Someone decided that they had to reveal what exactly is going on in this film even though, within the movie itself, it's framed as a mystery or even a surprise. It's frustrating as you sit there, watching these people move around a spooky house, knowing that vampire ballerina stuff will happen eventually, but the film is taking its sweet time getting there. If you were going to spoil that aspect of the film, why drag it out so long within the film itself? The brief summary above does a much better job of teasing the film because it doesn't give away what we are dealing with.
This means the movie feels long and slow by the time the vampire ballerina fun times start. From there, the film leans much harder into its comedic tone than the thriller or horror aspects we see in the first act. We get jokes about what can or cannot kill a vampire; we see the cast making the worst decisions while calling out the fact that they are making the worst possible decisions in a very Scream or Cabin in the Woods sort of way. The movie is self-aware, or at least the cast is suddenly self-aware enough to try to make that tonal switch work. They're able to pull this off because the entire concept of this film is ridiculous, and they managed to get a very talented cast that leaned in as far as they possibly could.
Much must be said about Alisha Weir because she does quite a bit with a role that is not easy for an adult to pull off, let alone a kid. It's clear that she is a talented dancer, and blending that with her otherworldly movements once we know she isn't human is the kind of dissonance that works, even if it rehashes most of the "kid is actually a monster" tropes we have seen before. Melissa Barrera continues to prove that Paramount made the worst decision of its life by firing her from the Scream franchise, and Dan Stevens continues to be the best in pretty much anything he is in. Stevens has been on a wild genre ride in the four months of 2024 alone, and we can hope he continues to pop up in more things.
Kathryn Newton, however, feels underutilized. Considering she is as much a staple in the horror genre as Barrera is, it feels like Radio Silence was treating her like she's the "newbie of the group." The film stumbles in how it wastes her, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Durand, William Catlett, and the late Angus Cloud all in thankless roles. Cloud's role is just to be irritating, and saying that Catlett is underutilized in the same way that most black people are in horror is all we need to say about that.
By the time everything in Abigail is coming to a fever pitch, it's like we're watching a completely different film from the one we started with. While that change could have been fun, instead, the transition felt clunky. The concept is ridiculous and only gets more ridiculous once Abigail starts "playing with her food." There is nothing wrong with a tonal journey either, but we knew that the transition was coming from the marketing. The switch didn't feel natural, and it made everything less fun than it could have been. Even the final reveal about who is playing Father isn't enough to bring this back from the edge.
This doesn't make the movie terrible. Some parts work, and there are individual moments within performances that work, but the film doesn't come together as a cohesive whole. When all hell breaks lose, and Ready or Not goes for broke in the third act, it feels earned because we watched Grace fight tooth and nail to get there; we saw that journey. When all hell breaks loose in Abigail, you don't feel much of anything aside from wondering how uncomfortable all of that fake blood must be.
Abigail
4.5/10
Abigail is a film that feels kneecapped by its own marketing as the film is written and structured like we don't know what Abigail is rendering the entire first act nearly meaningless.
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