Universal does monsters right. I’m no movie maven but I don’t know why the whole Dark Universe thing didn’t work out. These movies are good! Abigail recently came to one of the streaming services I use and I watched it right away. (There’s sometimes a delay between when I write about a movie and when it appears on this blog.) There will necessarily be spoilers here. I write this as someone who doesn’t watch trailers if I can help it, and who tries not to read about movies before watching them. So be forewarned, if you are, by any chance, like me. In case you’re bowing out now, this is a very good flick.
So, this is one of those spates of recent vampire movies where you go for quite a while before realizing it is a vampire film. Set as a taut thriller, a group of six criminals who don’t know each other kidnap a twelve-year old ballerina. She’s being held for ransom and the kidnappers have to keep her in the mansion for 24 hours, after which they each will receive their share of $50 million. What they don’t know is that Abigail is a centuries-old vampire who likes to play with her food. Suspecting they’ve been set up, the criminals speculate that the girl’s father has set his most vicious killer on them. Modern, educated people, they don’t believe in vampires (there’s quite a bit of shading from Dusk Till Dawn in here) but they have to figure out how to defeat one. Like Dusk Till Dawn, they ask themselves what they know about vampires, trying to come up with a plan to survive the night. As you might expect, a bloodbath ensues.
If you’re the kind of person who reads about movies first, you’ll know, as I didn’t, that this was planned as a remake of Dracula’s Daughter. It’s been so many years since I saw “the original” that I scarcely remember it. (So you know what’s coming, eventually.) I’ve watched many monster movies—like the books I’ve read, it’s so many that I lost count long ago. Many of these films are pretty good. And, of course, there are many I haven’t seen—that depends on money, time, and circumstance. I do have to note, however, that coming up on the centenary of Universal monster movies, they haven’t lost their touch. I have no idea what happened to their Dark Universe, but I do get the feeling they maybe gave up on the idea a little too soon.
