REVIEW | Abigail: An entertaining dose of blood and action

A group of criminals kidnap a twelve-year-old girl, daughter of a powerful figure from the underworld, and must keep her in a mansion for 24 hours. All they have to do is watch her at night to collect a $50 million ransom.

In an isolated mansion, the captors begin to disappear one by one, and discover, to their crescendo horror, that the little girl they are locked up with is not who she says she is.

Just like it happened in the movie Do not breathe (Don’t Breathe2016) directed by the Uruguayan Fede Alvarezwhere three thieves break into a house to rob a blind man, also has a premise where the perpetrator becomes the victim.

The directors of Abigail They understand that, for their film to work, the viewer needs to become attached to this gang of criminals, not an easy task to achieve, considering the premise that they are kidnapping a girl. To achieve their goal, the filmmakers decide to use black humor and introduce us to their protagonists from the beginning so that we can get to know them and understand each one’s motivations.

The cast is full of familiar faces: we have it Daniel Stevens (Gaslit, Legion) as the leader of the gang of thieves, Melissa Barrera (from the new franchise scream) in the role of potential “heroine”, since Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky) as the lovable hacker. As a colorful fact, the cast also has Alisha Weir (Matilda, Darklands) like the little one but not as innocent Abigailand with the last participation on screen of Angus Cloudwho knew how to play one of our favorite characters in Euphoria and who died last year.

The production of the studio Radio Silence gather the slasher what we see in scream with the style of whodunit (who did it) that began with the works of Christie Agatha. Added to this is a supernatural element that adds the terrifying factor to the story.

The fusion of all genres works very well as does the blood and gore festival that we are going to see throughout the film. The biggest problem with the bet directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett is that self-poilea through a marketing campaign that reveals who is responsible for the murders from the beginning. It is understood that this decision was made to be able to sell it better and that the focus of the story is on seeing how the characters themselves discover the truth that we already know and how they confront this.

In any case, I think it would have been much more rewarding to have the element of surprise, since once all the cards are put on the table, Abigail It falls into excessive repetition of some sequences and several extra twists that could have been avoided.

In conclusion, the film does not fail to fulfill its intention of keeping you trapped until the end and gaining genuine interest in its characters by making this band of criminals who don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into lovable.