With Abigail, Radio Silence expands its horror empire toward one of the most beloved creatures in horror: Vampires. Besides being filled to the brink with blood, guts, and creative death, Abigail ends with a bang and the promise of sequels. 716qo

Abigail follows a group of professional criminals hired to kidnap the daughter of a mysterious wealthy man. Their goal is to hold the girl in a secluded mansion for 24 hours while the person who ordered the hit, Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), negotiates a $50 million ransom.

It seems like an easy job, but the crew soon finds out that the girl (Alisha Weir) is the only child of Kristof Lazar (Matthew Goode), a powerful and dangerous crime lord. She’s no girl either, as Abigail reveals herself to be a hundreds-of-years-old vampire who wants to feed on her captors.

Why does Abigail hunt down the criminals? 5ph6f

Abigail was turned into a vampire by her blood-thirsty father because he wanted to have an immortal family of his own. However, the crimelord stopped paying attention to his daughter as the years ed. Abigail is desperate to win back her father’s affection, which is why she has been hunting down people who crossed him. 

For instance, Joey (Melissa Barrera) is a former military doctor who was dishonorably discharged after getting addicted to morphine. Joey began to work for criminals to pay for her addiction, patching them up. One day, she was high while performing a bullet extraction surgery and accidentally killed one of Lazar’s business associates. This unfortunate event would put Joye on Abigail’s blacklist.

Abigail’s modus operantis is quite simple. She turned Lambert into a vampire, binding her to her will. Lambert is in charge of putting crews together and offering a vast sum to kidnap the girl. Every crew ends up in the same mansion, where Abigail toys with the criminals until she has killed them all. The bodies of previously hunted criminals can be found on the mansion’s inside pool as bizarre souvenirs of Abigail’s hunting habits.

Who is ‘Abigail’s true villain? 1x3t3z

In the ending of Abigail, we learn that Lambert wants to stage a coup and take control of Lazar’s criminal empire. He convinces Frank (Dan Stevens) to him in working together to kill Abigail and Lazar – the crimelord is coming to the mansion after being summoned by the traitor. As a power-hungry asshole, Frank lets Lambert turn him into a vampire, gaining the creature’s strength and healing powers.

Frank’s first choice as a monster is to kill Lambert, exacting revenge for being tricked and trapped in the mansion. When Abigail finds Frank and Joey, the newly-turned vampire bites the girl on her neck, apparently killing her. Then, he goes after Joey, who has constantly disrespected his authority as crew leader. 

Joey escapes to the library, but she’s no match for Frank and his vampiric powers. Fortunately for Joey, Abigail is still alive. The tiny vampire is weakened, but she can still fight since Frank didn’t drain all of her blood. The two women forces to take down the movie’s true villain.

Frank overpowers Joye and Abigail. He also takes a note from Abigail’s book and bites Joey. However, Frank does not feed Joey vampire blood, the final ingredient for a total transformation. Humans who get partially turned can regenerate their wounds but become puppets to the vampire master that bites them. However, that’s a power that takes years to master. Joey takes advantage of Frank’s ignorance and pretends to obey his commands. That creates the perfect window for her to stab Frank in the heart, killing him. Frank’s death undoes the vampiric curse he put on Joey, releasing her from her destiny as a creature of the night.

What happens to Melissa Barrera’s Joey? 2g1f3

Since Joey helps Abigail remove Frank, the child vampire permits her former prey to leave the mansion. After the horrors she experiences, Joey gains a new appreciation of life and is ready to return to the son she abandoned, whom she only wanted to see after being paid the heist money.

Joey’s happy ending gets cut short when Lazar arrives, who we learn is Count Dracula. Dracula jumps over Joey, ready to drain her life. Abigail stops him, telling her father that Joey saved her life. Abigail also confronts Dracula about his absence and tells the vampire lord that Joey was there when she needed someone. Dracula apologizes to his daughter, saying he’s there for her now. Finally, Dracula greets Joey and tells her to leave before dinner. Joey leaves, ready to claim her life back.

Abigail does not have a post-credits scene, but there are many loose threads Radio Silence could use for a sequel. Count Dracula and Abigail are still alive, meaning a sequel can explore their shaky relationship. Secondly, Joey is free after learning the truth about Lazar’s identity, so she can be dragged into another paranormal incident. Considering the hype around the vampire ballerina movie, we might see Abigail return sooner rather than later.

After making horror history by breathing new life into the Scream franchise, creative collective Radio Silence is back in theaters with Abigail. Unfortunately, despite how good Abigail might be, the movie is sabotaged by a misguided marketing campaign.

Starring a phenomenal cast that includes final girl Melissa Barrera and the young and gifted Alisha Weir (Netflix’s Matilda the Musical), Abigail follows a group of criminals tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy man. Taking a note from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the team uses fake names and hides personal details to ensure everyone’s safety in case things go south and one of them gets caught by the police. The secrecy surrounding the job is so great that no one knows their target except Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), the mastermind who ordered the hit. Their goal is to snatch Abigail (Weir), take her to a secluded mansion, and hold her for 24 hours until a $50 million ransom gets paid. However, dangerous and inexplicable things start to happen in the mansion.

That’s it. That’s the movie. Or at least, that’s all the audience should have known about Abigail before going to theaters. Unfortunately, every trailer, image, and interview released as part of Abigail’s marketing campaign ruins the movie’s twist and reveals *spoiler alert* that the titular character is a vampire.

Abigail begins as a heist movie, slowly introducing all the players involved in the daring abduction. Since each crew member has a specific job and quirky personality, forced confinement doesn’t take long to become a source of hostility among them. These are all strangers, bound by a common goal but comfortable enough with the underworld to turn against each other. When rumors about their target’s identity emerge, they are ready to point fingers – and guns. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett masterfully use the movie’s introduction to enthrall the audience with a perfect balance of tension and comedy. That’s why it’s a shame people won’t enjoy the first arc of Abigail for what it is, as everyone will be impatiently waiting for Weir to show her fangs and begin the hunt.

While Radio Silence’s last original movie, Ready or Not, also deals with a twist spoiled by the trailer, the change of pace comes early in the film. Because of that, it doesn’t get in the way of the story the directors are trying to tell. With Abigail, though, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett want to trick horror fans into buying a house invasion thriller and getting a vampire slaughter-fest. It takes Abigail over 40 minutes to introduce her authentic self in a moment that should flip a button and cleverly tie all the clues the story subtly left behind. If Abigail existed in a marketing vacuum, the bloody reveal at the end of the first arc would be nothing short of genius. Instead, because everyone knows what’s coming, it feels too much like a long wait.

For the rest of Abigail’s runtime, Radio Silence delivers gruesome deaths in a blood-soaked battle for survival as the vampire toys with her prey. That gives the directors the excuse to showcase their best work yet regarding gore. The death and mutilation in Abigail is incredible because Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are committed to practical effects, knowing all too well that horror looks better when it doesn’t rely too much on CGI. So, for horror fiends who rejoice in well-cooked brutality – this writer included – Abigail is a delicious feast.

Story-wise, Abigail has many similarities with Ready or Not, which are easy to understand when we realize Guy Busick co-wrote both scripts. The two movies deal with a group of people pitted against a resourceful killer inside a fabulous mansion, leading to creative deaths and a non-ending cat-and-mouse game. Abigail, however, inverts Ready or Not logic by turning the killer into an antagonist instead of the final girl. Nevertheless, things will more or less evolve similarly until the third arc, when Abigail tries to subvert the movie’s logic again, to mixed results.

Abigail is also similar to Ready or Not when mixing ghastly violence with comedic moments. Not every joke lands, and some moments of Abigail feel uneven, while Ready or Not is a nearly perfect masterpiece. Nevertheless, Radio Silence’s vampire tale is highly entertaining, a popcorn story tailored to become an easy choice in a movie night with friends. Still, after the credits roll, we can’t help but wish Abigail had not traded substance for style, as this might be the least memorable entry in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s filmography.

In their previous films, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett showed an exquisite talent for crafting popular horror stories that still had something human to say. Both SCREAM and Scream VI are brilliant deconstructions of contemporary horror tropes. At the same time, Ready or Not takes down the final girl archetype to turn Samara Weaving into a liberating female character. Abigail tries to find an emotional core through the backstories of Barrera’s Joey and Weir’s vampire. Unfortunately, the supposed character growth of both characters is too sudden and superficial to hit the mark. It also doesn’t help that Abigail’s most significant attempt to anchor the script into grounded human connections comes too late, in the middle of a messy third arc that keeps adding new twists for shock value alone.

All of that said, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are true horror aficionados. They understand all the tropes and clichés associated with vampires, using the audience’s knowledge against them every chance they can. The script by Busick and Stephen Shields has a lot of wiggling room to test all the traditional weapons against vampires or to delve into the different rituals of vampiric transformation. That’s an extra treat for horror fans, who can discover the truth about Abigail’s blood-sucking creatures and the cast of criminals.

Finally, something has to be said about Weir and Barrera. The young actress is having the time of her life playing a savage monster. It’s also delightful to see Weir dancing around covered in blood after cute musical acts for Netflix’s Matilda. Despite her young age, Weir has already proved her brilliance, and we can only hope she gets more diverse and exciting roles in the future. As for Barrera, her exit from the Scream franchise raised some questions about her career, but Abigail proves she doesn’t need Ghostface to shine as a scream queen. Watching the two together is a spectacle on its own and enough reason to give Abigail a chance.

Abigail is currently available in theaters.

If you ask me, I think Hollywood doesn’t make enough vampire movies anymore. Whilst we had a few last year, they weren’t very good, we need more good films focused on those blood-sucking creatures of the night; lucky for us, Universal is delivering the scares with the horror: Abigail.

The film follows a group of kidnappers who plan to hold the daughter of a rich crime lord for a 50 million dollar ransom. Unfortunately for them, the girl is actually a vampire, and too late the group realize that they’re trapped in the house and the hunters become the hunted. Judging from the trailer alone, Abigail looks set to be a pretty wild ride, with plenty of horror, gore and even a few jokes.

That’s not the only reason to be excited about the movie though, as we’re also being treated to a great line-up of stars with plenty of familiar faces. So who do we know from the cast? And who are the fresh faces?

Who plays the kidnappers in Abigail? u2523

Coming off her stint in the Scream franchise, Melissa Barrera is sticking to what she knows, going from one horror-slasher to another. She plays Joey, one of the kidnappers and one of the only people seen being nice to Abigail in the trailer. We also have Kathryn Newton, Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, William Catlett and Angus Cloud ing Barrera and we can expect to see at least some of them get eaten by Abigail.

This will be one of Angus Cloud’s final roles after the Euphoria star sadly ed away last year at the age of 25. Filming began on June 30th last year and Cloud was able to finish his scenes before his death a month later.

Who else is in the cast of Abigail? 336x1u

Of course, you know a film or series is going to be good when you’ve got Breaking Bad star Giancarlo Esposito in a vaguely intimidating or outright villainous role. In this case, he plays the apparent mastermind behind the whole kidnapping scheme, although he looks like he knows more than he’s letting on.

Then of course, we have the ballerina vampire herself: Abigail, played by Alisha Weir who shot to fame in 2022 for her leading role in Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical. Of course, Matilda Wormwood and Abigail might both be magical girls, but aside from that they’re worlds apart, although I reckon if it came down to it, Matilda would absolutely win in a fight.