Abigail: Dracula’s Daughter Makeover is Bloody Good Fun
By Thom Ernst
Rating: B+
The latest creature revived from the vault of Universal Classic Monsters is a pirouetting shark-toothed 12-year-old girl named Abigail.
Abigail is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, two-thirds of the film collective Radio Silence. These guys are responsible for the last two films in the Scream franchise, but if that doesn't thrill you, they also made the excellent Ready or Not, (2019). And it's from that film that Abigail takes most of its cues. These are “hunted” house movies where victims are trapped and hunted inside a sprawling mansion.
Alisha Weir in Abigail.
The claim is that Abigail is a remake of Dracula's Daughter (1936). The claim feels misleading, given that Abigail pays little heed to the original characters and even less to the original plot. However, the two films share a kidnapping and references to a deathly invincible father. There is also a character named Lambert, which might reference Dracula's Daughter's director Lambert Hillyer. But the similarities stop there.
Abigail is a blood-soaked fusion of Salem's Lot with an Agatha Christie novel. It would be an evil greater than anything Abigail does in the film were I to mention the Christie title. I can share that Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet toss in a nod to The Exorcist (1973) and the script, written by Guy Busick (the third member of Radio Silence) and Stephen Shields, owes plenty to the odd-ball humour that fuels The Evil Dead franchise and Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)
The film opens with Abigail (Alisha Weir) on stage, dancing to an empty auditorium. Weir, last seen in Matilda: The Musical, knows dance, and Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet give her plenty of opportunities to ply her skills. In a scene certain to disturb any parent (and anyone with empathy), Abigail is abducted from her room by a motley crew of kidnappers.
Abigail, while blindfolded and chained to a bed, seems to be a sweet young girl, terrified of what is to happen to her at the hands of her abductors. However, it would be a mistake for the kidnappers to be lenient when trying to drive a stake through her heart. The other side of Abigail is cunning, violent, and cruel.
A moment on Weir:
Perhaps it’s Weir's age that makes her performance so impressive (she was 12 or 13 when filming) or it’s the leap she makes from musical to horror film with such apparent ease that it gives credence to the word astounding. Weir is beyond amazing, out-cursing Linda Blair's Regan from The Exorcist, out-dancing M3GAN, and out-terrifying the child with the garden-trowel from Night of the Living Dead.
Weir's performance shocks and amuses. Onscreen, Weir denounces the precociousness typical of characters her age. Abigail is pretty, but she's far from cute. Being aware of Weir's performance takes away nothing from the illusion that the child on screen is pure evil. If I hadn't been aware that actors rarely get Oscar nominations for horror films, rarer for actors living in Ireland, and child actors even rarer than that, I'd have declared Weir's performance as Oscar-worthy.
It is, but Abigail needs to be a bigger film to get her noticed. But can we bookmark that sense of “Oscar worthiness” for another time? I'm only two films into Weir's career (I've yet to see Wicked Little Letters, 2024) reviewed by Original-Cin colleague Liz Braun), but already I'm convinced that Weir has an Oscar statuette in her future.
Weir shines without taking away anything from the other performers. Everyone, except the dude who plays Abigail's chauffeur, gets their onscreen moment. And not just magnificent bloody moments, of which the film has plenty.
Melissa Barrera plays Joey, the most sympathetic of the kidnappers, although all the kidnappers, save for their foreman, Frank (Dan Stevens), are equal parts likable and psychotic.
Kathryn Newton—who stars in Lisa Zelda Williams' project, Lisa Frankenstein (2024) —plays a fun-loving hacker chick, Sammy. Sammy gets laughs, and so does Kevin Durand as Peter, the group's enforcer—big, solid, and stupid. Peter gets lines like, "Vampires aren't real" and—after slamming his weight against a door—"It's locked," both said without a hint of irony. William Catlett is Rickles, as in Don Rickles, a professional sniper and the only person in the room Joey seems to be able to tolerate.
Dean (Angus Cloud), a mumbling, barely decipherable, small-time crook, is the least equipped to manage the job out of the six kidnappers. Dean is a champ behind the wheel, driving the getaway van, but when bonding with his accomplices (mainly Sammy), Dean is a level-one amateur. But if Sammy and Peter get laughs, it's Dean who rocks the film's comic relief.
Sadly, Abigail is Angus Cloud's final film. Cloud died July 2023, aged 25.
The film is dedicated to Cloud.
Abigail. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, written by Guy Busick and Stephen Shields. Starring Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, William Catlett, and Angus Cloud. In select theatres April 19.