ABIGAIL 7 points
(United States/Ireland, 2024)
Address: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.
Script: Guy Busick and Stephen Shields.
Duration: 109 minutes.
Performers: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Alisha Weir, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Giancarlo Esposito.
Premiere in cinemas.
Matt Betinelli-Olpin and Tyker Gillettthe duo of American filmmakers who, together with screenwriter Guy Busick, “revitalized” the saga scream with its chapters 5 and 6, released in 2022 and 2023 respectively, raises its aim with this sneaky rereading of vampire horror comediesparticularly those from the 1980s. There are no retro tones in Abigail, but the transition from suspense drama to raw and even cartoonish gore, always within the walls of what could be defined as a haunted mansion, point towards certain generic pleasures of the past. Adding Irish to the script department Stephen Shieldsthe quartet performs one of those tales of confinement and growing dread (it is no coincidence that the novel is openly cited ten little blacks), although at first things seem to go on a much more realistic side.
The first forty minutes of Abigail describe the kidnapping of a ballet-loving girl, the daughter of some kind of billionaire. The team responsible for the criminal operation is made up of four men and two women who do not previously know each other, and whose names must remain strictly secret (as in so many big robberies and other illegal weeds in the history of cinema). The one who has brought them together to carry out the mission is a man from the underworld played by Giancarlo Esposito, and once the young woman has been taken to the old abandoned house it is only a matter of waiting twenty-four hours until she receives the ransom money. Of course, nothing will go according to calculations, and disaster begins to loom when the first of the kidnappers is found literally headless in the kitchen.
While Abigail (the young Irish actress Alisha Weirin a very different role from that of Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical) remains locked in a room, scared to death of what might happen to her, the motley group of criminals begins to suspect the presence of a legendary and bloody hitman. That’s what everyone thinks for themselves, or someone in the contingent is not who they say they are. Until the second corpse begins to transform the place into a cemetery, the film by Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett offers some of its best weapons, with a sense of humor that begins to take the lead without resorting to explicit gags. That this collection of tough outcasts, experts in crime, begins to scream in high pitched tones at the possibility of a horrific death is part of a narrative approach that becomes a little less effective after the great mask falls, revealing the true face of terror.
As the same trailer anticipates, The young girl is not exactly innocent or harmless, quite the opposite.. What remains from then on is a game of cats and mice in which the perpetrators become easy prey for a born predator. Abigail offers not once but three times the musical connection with “Swan Lake,” the soundtrack of the first film bloodsucker with synchronized sound in history, although in the talks of the protagonists references to Twilight and Nosferatu. The mother-child connection, at this point in the game a horror film cliché, comes from the character played by the Mexican Melissa Barrera (veteran of both scream of the 21st century), a slight drag on the script that fails to stop the hemoglobin jets. Ultimately, that is the proposal of the film: a playful story that crosses the slasher with vampire cinema, seasoned with a good dose of blood spilled and consumed. Or exploded, depending on the circumstances.
