I firmly believe this is one film that should be watched with you knowing as little about it as possible. The more you know, the less fun it is. It was clearly crafted that way, and the people who make trailers do not give a crap. I’ll spoil all day every day if the spoiler isn’t really a spoiler, or if the movie is god awful, or some slog that exists simply to have a twist, but Abigail is none of those things.
I caught this on peacock, and without being too revealing, i thought the audio description was really strong. It’s fair to at least give a genre here, so as a horror movie, it does keep up that end of the bargain. As an R-Rated horror movie, it has no problem explaining the gore in full detail. The cast is somewhat limited, and I do feel like our character introductions could have been more in depth. We don’t get a lot, very surface level stuff, and the cast is pretty small.
The performances here are great. i loved Alicia Weir as Abigail. She has so much depth as an actress at her age. I’ve seen her in a few things now, including Matilda, and she has always been a bright spot. Really, most of the cast here is a standout. I feel bad for this being Angus Cloud’s final film, as he isn’t in that much of it, and he’s really underdeveloped. He was also my least favorite character.
But, the rest of the cast, including Melissa barrera, Dan Steven’s, Katherine Newton, Kevin Durand, and Giancarlo Esposito all have enough time to do something with their characters to give them life.
As a really quick elevator pitch plot, the film centers around a group of career criminals who don’t know each other, are told not to tell each other anything real about themselves, but they have to kidnap a young girl named Abigail and hold her for ransom. Needless to say, things do not go as planned.
I had more fun with this film than I thought I would. Last year, a lot of people were into Renfeld, and I just only kinda liked that, but this was totally my jam. To be honest, my two favorite kinds of horror movies are teen slashers that aren’t overtly gory, and horror comedies like Shaun Of The Dead, Tucker and Dale Vs Evil, The Cabin in The Woods, and Cooties. This was very much my speed.
Don’t let it get spoiled for you.
Final Grade: A-
