A cheerfully apparent splatterthon, the brand new horror film “Abigail” follows a easy, time-tested recipe that requires a minimal quantity of components. Whole time: 109 minutes. Take a mysterious little one, one suave fixer and 6 logic-challenged criminals. Place them in an extra-large pot with a couple of rats, creaking floorboards and ominous shadows. Stir. Simmer and proceed stirring, letting the stew come to a near-boil. After an hour, crank the warmth till a few of the meat falls off the bone and the entire combine turns deep crimson. Get pleasure from!
That roughly sums up this film, a horror flick that’s serviceable sufficient to make you sometimes giggle or flinch, but can be so aggressively unambitious that it scarcely appears price griping about. It facilities on the kidnapping of the title character (a wonderful Alisha Weir), an outwardly self-possessed 12-year ballerina who’s snatched one evening by a half-dozen style varieties. A formulaically numerous cohort of underworld backside feeders (performed by Dan Stevens, amongst others), these Scooby-Doo-ish chuckleheads include divergent expertise, histories and expiration dates, and are largely tasked with padding the reed-thin story and dying horribly.
The filmmakers — it was written by Stephen Shields and Man Busick, and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett — have outfitted the story with the same old particulars. A lot of the film unfolds inside a sprawling labyrinthine mansion that appears prefer it was imagineered by an amusement park designer who scanned some outdated horror motion pictures whereas thumbing by image books on the historical past of the European aristocracy. There are fits of armor flanking the entrance door, a bearskin rug on the ground, an empty coffin tucked in a nook and oddly, given the style circumstances, some recent garlic in an in any other case derelict kitchen.
There are some tangy bits, together with Giancarlo Esposito, who enters, barks some orders and shortly leaves the abductors alone with Abigail within the mansion whereas they watch for her father to pay a ransom inside 24 hours. As soon as this narrative stopwatch begins, the crew members — who additionally embody Melissa Barrera, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, an amusing Kevin Durand and Angus Cloud (who died in 2023) — banter and pose, grimace and scream whereas managing to be evenly interesting and fully disposable. At one level, the filmmakers nod at one in every of their influences with a shot of Agatha Christie’s 1939 thriller novel “And Then There Had been None,” a few group of people who find themselves enigmatically offed.
“Abigail” has been described as a tackle “Dracula’s Daughter” (1936), one of many horror movies in Common’s vault, a few of which it has resurrected in some style. The press notes for “Abigail” name-check a couple of vampire titles, however “Daughter” isn’t amongst them, and for good purpose as a result of there’s little to hyperlink these two. That’s too unhealthy; the sooner movie is a real curiosity. It stars Gloria Holden as a countess who preys on women and men alike, and begs a physician to assist her along with her “ghastly” situation. With its lesbian overtones, the film is a vexed and attractive textual content — censors urged the studio to keep away from solutions of “perverse sexual want” — and the countess a fancy villain in a movie that may be very a lot price a glance.
AbigailRated R for gore and extra gore. Working time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.
