The completely spoiler-free premise of Abigail is this: a group of mercenaries are hired to kidnap a 12-year-old ballerina and guard over her until the ransom can be delivered. But they quickly discover that the girl’s father is a legendarily powerful crime boss, and he’ll be sending his most ruthless hit man to kill them all.
If you’re completely spoiler-averse (and that seems like something you’d be into, of course), then I recommend watching it without knowing anything else about it. Including this post, of course. The larger premise is “spoiled” in every trailer and every description of the movie, so good luck avoiding that! But also, there’s enough going on that it’s still interesting and surprising even if you think you know what you’re getting into.
My overall take: it is the horror/action/black comedy mash-up that I’d been hoping it would be, in a similar spirit as Orphan: First Kill, Malignant, and M3GAN, although not quite as good as any of those. It’s comedically mean-spirited, full of violence and blood and gore and people being nasty to each other, but keeping all of it just enough over the top that it’s still fun.
In fact, I was enjoying it enough that I wondered why it seemed to just disappear with little mention; I suspect that’s because the third act is a mess. It goes on too long, stops doing anything interesting with its premise and just becomes one fight scene after another, tacks on at least two unnecessary endings plus a Teachable Moment, and overall just feels like the result of extensive rewrites and studio intervention.
Until that point, though, it had a great “they don’t make them like this anymore” energy to it. It had the feeling of independent filmmakers working with an original premise and a big studio budget, gathering a cast and crew who all seemed to understand exactly what they were making, and put out into the world as a standalone project with no concern over franchises or tie-ins or “lore.” Considering that it’s already being called a “flop,” it seems unlikely that Universal will try to turn it into anything that it’s not1Except maybe a Horror Nights house? That could work., and that may be the best thing for it.
My favorite specific thing about Abigail is very similar to my favorite thing about the True Blood series: what happens when a vampire gets killed. If I remember correctly, it took nine episodes for True Blood to finally show a vampire getting staked, and the reveal was so gloriously over-the-top that it’s still one of my favorite scenes from any TV series.
Abigail takes it even farther. It has fun with traditional vampire lore, and one of my favorite scenes has the crew going into battle with garlic, a crucifix, and a stake, only to get absolutely wrecked. But the reveal that sunlight works is masterfully done: so immediate, surprising, and dramatic that I was just as confused as the characters were. But they still left room to build on the idea, and it led to a perfectly-executed moment later, seeing a vampire spontaneously explode in a 20-foot radius the instant they were exposed to sunlight.
The reason I’d pick that as the stand-out scene is that it was a perfect encapsulation of the tone and attitude of this movie. The previous scenes hinted what was going to happen: two of the only marginally-sympathetic characters being forced to betray each other, and then one of them seemingly unaware that she’s giving off smoke as she’s hit by sunlight through the boarded-up windows. So when she is later hit by reflected sunlight and immediately explodes, it’s ludicrously hyper-violent and sudden, but also exactly what we knew was going to happen eventually. It’s brutal and darkly comic, but also not completely nihilistic, since we had built up some level of sympathy for and attachment to the character. It’s also a reminder of how throughout the movie, the filmmakers have been playing around with our expectations, swapping and subverting what we think we know vs what we actually know.
Unfortunately, it’s also the last time the movie feels as if it’s speaking with its own voice. After that, it feels like the story had a protagonist locked inside a house with too many villains, and it was going to take a lot of predictable Hollywood storytelling to work their way out of it. Even the team-ups and “surprise” betrayals ended up feeling like wasted opportunities. It was somewhat redeemed by the protagonist’s last line as she leaves the house, which kind of echoed what I was thinking: WTF?
I’d hope that Universal and the rest of Hollywood learn the right lessons from Abigail, but of course I’m skeptical. This is the perfect example of a movie that earns its “3 and a half stars” rating; it’s just clever and original enough to feel like an original concept that works well as a standalone project. Conventional wisdom says that it takes super-high budgets and tons of spectacles to warrant going into a theater vs waiting for a streaming release, and as recently as a month or two ago, I would’ve assumed that was the case. But I kind of regret waiting to watch Abigail at home, since it feels like it would’ve been a lot more fun seeing it with a bunch of people who were all watching it for the first time.2For the record: the entire time I was watching it, my Apple Watch kept warning me that my heart rate was going over 120.
I’d bet that the takeaway within the studio was that the “disappointing” box office was proof that audiences don’t want to see modest-budget standalone movies like this anymore, and it takes big franchises and AAA spectacle to get audiences into theaters. But I’m more inclined to think that this is exactly the kind of movie that could bring non-MCU and non-Pixar audiences to the theater, if the marketing had emphasized the whole communal experience.3Remember when all the commercials had “night-vision” cameras showing audiences reacting to shocking moments on-screen? I never, ever thought I’d be suggesting that was a strategy that worked. And I think the word-of-mouth would’ve been better if audiences left the theater with a better impression, instead of the sense that the entire last act had been aggressively rewritten and recut to desperately try and turn the movie into something it’s not.4AKA “We learned all the wrong lessons from M3GAN.”