Abigail (2024)

I am going to have to make a decision here, whether to include some spoilers in this review or not. Although I would normally work hard to avoid spoilers, Abigail has arguably already been spoiled for you if you have seen the trailer or some of the alternate poster designs. I understand why. It makes more sense to draw in the horror crowd it is aimed at, which wouldn’t necessarily happen if it was sold to look like a straightforward crime thriller. So . . . I am going to discuss it as if it is a pretty straightforward crime thriller, but I am assuming that you will all be aware of the fact that it is more than that.

Things start with a kidnapping. Six people work together to snatch a little girl (Abigail, played by Alisha Weir) before driving to an isolated country home where they have to stay holed up for 24 hours. If all goes well then the payday is $50M. All isn’t about to go well though. It turns out that not only is Abigail’s father very rich, but he is also very powerful and dangerous. And Abigail may share a few of his traits. 

Written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, this is a very smart and funny horror comedy that makes a lot of things very obvious from the opening titles (for those familiar with the music cue). The twists and turns aren’t presented as major rug-pulls, nothing here will surprise fans of the tropes being played with, but they keep being thrown into the plot with a sense of glee, curveball after curveball for our main characters to deal with. With directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett at the helm (directors of the last two Scream movies, as well as the very enjoyable Ready Or Not), everyone going into this should have an idea of what they are getting into. It’s playful, it’s bloody, and it’s a fresh take on some very familiar material.

The cast are all on the same page, happy to fit into their archetypes and just allow themselves to be part of a group that descends into chaos as everything around them starts going wrong. Melissa Barrera is much better here than she was in the Scream movies, making for a great central character to root for, and Dan Stevens is having a whale of a time as the cold-blooded leader of the group. Kevin Durand and Kathryn Newton are much simpler, more sweet-hearted characters (relatively speaking), and both Angus Cloud and William Catlett do well in their respective roles, even if they seem less important to the group than some of the others. Everyone is a bag of clichés, but it doesn’t matter when they are being used in such a fun way. Weir is the star though, and proves more than capable at conveying the many different moods her character goes through during the unraveling of the kidnapping scheme. It is also worth mentioning a couple of excellent cameo turns from Giancarlo Esposito and Matthew Goode.

Unabashedly profane and bloody throughout, Abigail is the most fun I have had with a mainstream American horror movie in a hell of a long time. It’s well-paced, it looks gorgeous throughout (even as the sets become drenched in blood), it’s inventive, and there are numerous easter eggs dotted throughout that can be enjoyed or ignored without changing how you feel about the rest of the film. All in all, it’s a bloody good time for fans of those involved.

8/10

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