"Abigail": one-paragraph review

Alisha Weir as the eponymous Abigail

Barely a day after watching "Heretic," I watched another 2024 "horror" movie called "Abigail," which I later found out had been billed as a horror-comedy. I had gone in thinking it was purely a horror movie. The effort stars Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, and Giancarlo Esposito. The story begins with what appears to be ballet practice for a twelve-year-old girl named Abigail (Weir), who has no idea she's the object of a heist involving a team of anonymous-to-each-other experts who will kidnap Abigail and extort her father for millions. The team is led by "Frank" (Stevens) and includes "Joey" (Barrera), a former Army medic; "Sammy" (Newton), a hacker and security expert; "Peter" (Durand), a dimwit who is the group's muscle; "Rickles" (Catlett), the ex-Marine sniper; and "Dean" (Cloud), the stoner getaway driver and loose cannon. Coordinating the group from afar is Lambert (Esposito), who meets the team at a creepy mansion after they've abducted Abigail. Lambert tells the group that the easy part is done, and that they must merely wait out the next 24 hours with Abigail secured to a bed. Lambert leaves; Joey is given the assignment of checking in on Abigail periodically; she and Abigail seem to form a bond. As it turns out, though, Abigail is a centuries-old vampire who has orchestrated the gathering of this group of people, most of whom are or were enemies of her father. When people start dying, the deaths are initially blamed on Abigail's father's legendary but never-seen right-hand man Valdez. As it turns out, the killings of past enemies were all orchestrated and carried out by Abigail herself. As with the just-reviewed "Heretic," "Abigail" comes down to a final girl, following the horror trope to a T. There are plenty of exploding bodies and tons of flying, ropey, gloppy blood and viscera. Throats are savagely bitten; faces are ripped halfway off; heads are completely ripped off (it was easy to predict who would be the first to die); a couple people get turned into vampires themselves, and Lambert—himself a vampire—is revealed to be something like a familiar or servant. Abigail's father, whose cold approval Abigail has been seeking this entire time, reveals himself only at the very end of the movie. While watching, I dimly began to realize this was a horror-comedy once I saw the first few scenes of exaggerated, Raimi/De Palma-level blood and gore. Another clue was Abigail's fighting style, which is something of a comic travesty of ballet. Young actress Alisha Weir, who does a fine job and looks winsome in human form, appears positively creepy as the vampiric Abigail, reminding me faintly of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (how have I not reviewed either Blatty's novel or Friedkin's movie?). As in "Heretic," the house in "Abigail" locks the principals in and is a character in its own right, but the place is not nearly as creepy as Mr. Reed's house in "Heretic," except maybe for Abigail's swimming pool of bloated, rotting corpses. Overall, though, I didn't find this movie either that horrific or that funny. Many of the plot twists and scares were entirely predictable; there were no jump scares to speak of, and none of the psychological tension of "Heretic." While the majority of critics apparently loved "Abigail," I'm not one of them. "Heretic" had its flaws, but compared to that movie, "Abigail" feels as if it's barely trying. Had the movie been directed by Sam Raimi and included Bruce Campbell, had it tried harder with the humor and been more tonally consistent, it might have been a much better story. You might watch "Abigail" and feel differently, but personally, I'd recommend that you skip this. Life is short. Oh, a bit of trivia: the actor who played stoner getaway-driver Dean, Angus Cloud, was in fact a real-life stoner and probably not acting: Cloud died at age 25 after an accidental overdose following the taking of a cocktail of drugs, including "fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and benzodiazepines." Way to go, guy.