Abigail – Review

★★★★

Kill them slowly, tiny dancer… When they realize their kidnapping is actually a vamp napping, a criminal crew must seriously up their game in this new crime/vampire mashup from the team behind Ready Or Not and Scream V & VI. Get ready for the ballerina from hell.

In Abigail, after a group of criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballet-loving daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is hole up in an isolated mansion, and watch the girl overnight. But when the captors start to dwindle, one by one, they start to realize – to their mounting horror – that they’re locked inside with the ballerina from hell.

As none of the kidnapping crew know each other, they have all been have Reservoir Dogs-style codenames and can only guess at each other’s backstories – so none of them know who they can trust. As they each tear around the house looking for an exit, they all start second-guessing their companions, a la The Usual Suspects, and paranoia quickly becomes almost as big of a threat as the vampire child stalking the hallways.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet (founders of the horror collective Radio Silence) have crafted what might just be the horror smash of the year. After establishing their horror credentials with contributions to anthologies V/H/S and Southbound, and found footage pregnancy horror Devil’s Due, they broke through to the mainstream in 2019 with the violently OTT slapstick romp Ready Or Not. They were immediately handed the reigns to the Scream franchise for parts V and VI, but there were those who said the franchise was constraining their wilder instincts.

Now freed from those obligations and once again able to indulge their instincts, they have clearly decided to let loose – Abigail is a rip-roaring, hair-raising, blood-soaked sensation. It takes the knowing gothic escapades of Ready Or Not and applies them to the story of some ‘Usual Suspects’ style crooks vs an eternally eight-year-old vampire in a tutu. If you enjoyed the explosions of blood in Ready Or Not, good news – in this film the directors provide almost as many gory detonations as they do wisecracks and sight gags. Make no mistake, Abigail is a romp from beginning to end.

Abigail has a killer ensemble vs a killer ballerina, as the cast is excellent throughout. Between this, Cuckoo and Godzilla x Kong this is clearly the year of Dan Stevens (The Guest ), here playing a cocky alpha male who barely has a handle on proceedings. Melissa Barrera, who led Radio Silence’s Scream movies, plays a mysterious medic with a talent for cold readings, while Kathryn Newton (Lisa Frankenstein) plays a ditzy computer hacker, Angus Cloud a clueless stoner, William Catlett (A Thousand And One) a taciturn enigma, and Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects) as Lambert, the brains behind the operation.

Perhaps the biggest revelations are Kevin Durand (Lost) as the muscles of the crew, and British actor Alisha Weir (Matilda) as the titular ballerina. Durand has long been one of those ‘faces you know’ from genre film and TV, but here he gives one of the best performances in the movie – get this guy bigger roles in more stuff, now, and use his comedy talents, because he is hilarious. Meanwhile, this film could stand or fall on its titular character, but Alisha Weir gives a performance that elevates the whole film and marks her out as a talent to watch, switching impishly between sobbing child and centuries-old sadistic bloodsucker with just a curl of her lip.

Horror-comedy is one of the trickiest of all genres to pull off, with the constant danger that the dread and the jokes will undercut each other. But Abigail strikes a perfect balance between being unabashedly bloody and darkly humorous, thanks to clever writing and playful direction. The production design, like the writing, also throws in playful references to Swan Lake, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and – if my eyes don’t deceive me – Dario Argento’s Phenomona.

Abigail cements Radio Silence’s place among the major voices of modern horror, with a delightful bit of mischief that pays homage to the classics – Nosfertutu, if you will. It’s sure to appeal to hardened horror enthusiasts while also being accessible to mainstream audiences who won’t know what they’re in for. Judging by my audience’s reaction, this will be a monster hit.

Abigail is a gleeful, bloody, and wildly entertaining slice of horror – a killer ensemble vs a killer ballerina, with gags, gore, twists, turns & fountains of blood. It’s Radio Silence’s best film to date. This sets the bar for popcorn horror in 2024… Recommended!

Abigail played at the Overlook Film Festival and is released in cinemas from 19 April.