‘Abigail’ Somehow Squanders a Murderous Vampire Child in a Tutu
Kids do the darndest things, and in Abigail, that includes sprouting fangs and sucking blood while wearing cute tutus. That plot point would, under normal circumstances, be classified as a spoiler, considering that Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s film, which hits theaters Apr. 19, hides its central surprise for its first third. Unfortunately, with the marketing department having totally let the cat out of the proverbial bag in order to get teenagers into multiplex seats, there’s zero mystery to this gruesome horrorshow—which is almost as deleterious as the material’s fondness for exposition over frights, bloat over concision, and clichés over invention.
As with their prior Scream and Scream VI, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s latest has modest personality but scant creative terror. Very loosely based on 1936’s Dracula's Daughter (by which I mean, it shares that predecessor’s basic conceit and virtually nothing else), this clumsy bloodbath concerns a seemingly perfect crime that goes horribly wrong. In an unnamed city, adolescent ballerina Abigail (Alisha Weir) travels home from rehearsal in a Rolls Royce to her opulent manor house. Unbeknownst to her, she’s not alone, since a gang of crooks are lurking in her bedroom’s shadows. Led by no-nonsense Frank (Dan Stevens), this gang has been hired by Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) to kidnap Abigail, transport her to a different lavish residence, and hold her hostage for 24 hours, at the end of which they’ll earn a collective $50 million.
Snatching and grabbing Abigail is a cinch for this squad, whose members use a syringe and duffel bag to knock the girl out and haul her to their destination. Upon completing this initial portion of their mission, Lambert welcomes them by stating, “My lovely pack of rats!” and then gives them monikers based on the Rat Pack: junkie medic Joey (Melissa Barrera); tattooed tech whiz Sammy (Kathryn Newton); dim-witted muscle Peter (Kevin Durand); slacker wheelman Dean (Angus Cloud); cool-headed sniper Rickles (William Catlett); and unfriendly Frank. Once Abigail is locked up, the sextet plays a prolonged guessing game regarding their real identities and origins, during which Joey—who’s already proven herself to be the compassionate foil to untrustworthy Frank—cornily lays out everyone’s backstory. More troubling than this ham-fisted info dump, however, is the fact that none of these individuals are unique or funny, chief among them Joey, who’s so obviously positioned as the nominal hero that her every subsequent goody-two-shoes gesture grates.