Hello and welcome to another review! I will be reviewing 2024’s Abigail which has an interesting plot surrounding one of my favorite supernatural creatures, vampires. (This isn’t a spoiler considering it is mentioned in the trailer).
If you have not seen the movie, you can find the trailer here. It follows a group of people who are in need of a big payout and opt to take a job that requires them to kidnap and babysit the daughter of a wealthy man. They soon realize that not everything is as it seems. The father is feared by everyone because he is quite powerful and his daughter is powerful in her own ways.
This concludes the non-spoiler portion of this film so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading here. I highly recommend this film to anyone who is interested in vampires, heists, and a little bit of comedy. Go watch the movie and come back later to share your thoughts!
Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (All the World is Sleeping, Scream VI), Dan Stevens (Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Beauty and the Beast), Kathryn Newton (Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), Kevin Durand (Wild Hogs, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Angus Cloud (Euphoria, The Line), and Giancarlo Esposito (The Box, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials).
This film starts seemingly innocent with Abigail finishing up her ballet practice before heading home. Unfortunately, her parents aren’t home when she arrives…
Except the presence of multiple people who take part in her kidnapping.
The team consists of; Peter (the muscle), Dean (the driver… RIP, Angus Cloud, it seemed like he was getting started in his acting career), Frank (an ex-detective or cop…. Anyway, he thinks he’s better than everyone), Sammy (a bored hacker with rich parents), Joey (a medic who had had some trouble with the law), and Rickles (the lookout and former marine sniper).
Once they get Abigail to the second location, they are told to babysit her for 24 hours. Here’s the kicker; they had to give up their phones. The reasoning for this was to ensure that they wouldn’t have been traced back to this mansion, but having your source of communication taken away when you’re in a location you hadn’t been to before is cause for concern. Esposito’s characters, Lambert is the one who called the shots in this operation and follows through with his rules. After collecting their phones, he leaves them to keep an eye on Abigail.
Only one person is to check on Abigail, but otherwise there’s food and a bar that they can help themselves to. Food makes sense, but if they were meant to be watching this girl and making sure that no one attacked them, why would they be allowed to consume alcohol? They were also told to not talk about each other and their lives and because alcohol is an inhibitor, it was bound to happen… it did. It was interesting to watch these characters verbally attack one another, as they guessed each other’s background. Barrera’s character, Joey, is constantly checking on Abigail throughout the night as well. She seemed the most qualified for this task because she has a son. The viewer gets to see this when she, before giving up her phone, takes a moment to look at the screensaver showcasing the two together. It is quickly established that Joey is the only one that really has some semblance of compassion for Abigail because she’s a child experiencing a horrifying situation.
Joey works to gain Abigail’s trust and eventually learns that she is the daughter of a powerful man, Kristoff Lazaar. Once this news gets back to everyone else, they seem unnerved and there’s a moment of panic as they all try to figure out what they should do. This moment only lasts for a short time before the characters decide to continue babysitting Abigail. This felt off because they were quick to try and walk out or figure out how to go about the situation. I don’t quite remember how they convinced themselves to stay, but I remember thinking that it was weird thaat their initial feeling of fear dissipated in seemingly less than five minutes.
Anyway, after this, the characters found various ways to entertain themselves while they waited out the night. They all explore the mansion on their own (classic horror movie trope) before things start to hit the fan. I found that this film had comedic elements and horrific undertones. The first death was shocking, but I love how Abigail had a sense of humor, dark as it may be. From dancing with corpses to making a cat and mouse game out of her prey, I liked her as a killer. She had one line that stuck with me: “I like to play with my food.” hearing those lines as a human is scary because it means you can’t expect a swift death, but rather experience true fear at the thought of being hunted, tortured, and killed in the most brutal way. I’d like to mention the first death, in which Abigail decapitated and drained the blood of her victim, Dean. She then set him up in a way where his fellow team could find him and assume that he was only sitting at the table. They soon discovered that upon touching him, his head would literally roll.
The rest aren’t attacked until they revisit the room where Abigail is staying and it is then when they find out that she is non-human. They go through the terrors of dealing with a vampire (incuding being locked in the mansion) until one of them is bitten. One of my favorite scenes is when the team try to thimk of ways to kill Abigail. There’s genuine discussion but a few comedic moments that I will always remember takes place during this. Sammy brings onions as they search for garlic and they all look at her like she’s crazy. They do put their best effort forward especially when remembering that they could knock her out in the same manner that they had knocked her out when they kidnapped her. They move forward with this plan but in the process Sammy is bitten and she asks what’\s going to happen to her. They manage to capture Abigail and lock her up, but long story short, she convinces Frank to let her free after everyone else had agreed to leave Abigail locked up. By this time, the sun had risen and it affects Abigail enough for them to escape into a room that has big windows. Around this time is when Sammy begins to turn and she turns on a fellow teammate due to Abigail being able to use mind control on her. Unfortunately, we then lose Peter, but Sammy is not too far behind as she is killed off by sunlight.
I was quite saddened by Sammy’s death because we spent more time with her while she was in the process of turning. We got about two seconds of her vampire version and I was interested in how Abigail would further use her. I know her death was good for the team overall, but I think that so much more could have been done with Sammy’s vampire character. Later in the film, Abigail mentions that it takes a long time to use skills like the ability to mind control others and so I would have liked for this concept to be explored more amongst others between her and Sammy.
From here, Frank and Joey are the last two survivors and they happen upon an area of the house where Lambert is watching them through surveillance cameras. Throughout the movie, my friends and I were questioning whether or not he was in on the operation and we questioned this when Abigal was trapped, telling the team her life story. We came to the conclusion then that he was, but this solidified it because, not only had he been watching them and took their only means of communication. As I type this, I’m sure he locked them all in the mansion as well. But, the viewer then finds out that he is also a vampire who actually wants to kill Abigail and her father.
We’re gonna have to pause here. I felt like this development made no sense with how the rest of the story was going due to the dwindling numbers of the team. Maybe Lambert didn’t want to be responsible for turning 6 people, but I think that if his true plan was to kill the two he worked for, it would’ve been easier with more help. The crazy thing is, he opts not to turn Joey, but rather turns Frank. Throughout the course of this film, the viewer gets to experience every side of Frank and honestly, he is not a person that should be roaming the earth as an immortal. The death of Lambert immediately proves this as Frank turns on him before trying to also take out Joey. This “twist” felt wholly unnecessary as it never even came into fruition. The idea to kill both vampires was talked about briefly before Lambert immediately dies. I think the only thing that was cool was the transformation that Frank underwent as his body underwent the transformation.
A final showdown between Frank and Abigail & Joey ensued with Frank being set up as the final boss. There are few moments where Frank looks like he’s going to win, but ultimately loses because of his arrogant attitude. He attempts to mind control Joey after he takes down Abigail, but it doesn’t work. When they fight back, this is where Abigail talks about how it takes time to do all the cool tricks. After the fight (which resulted in Frank’s death), Abigail’s father shows up, attempting to kill Joey. Abigail pleads with him to leave Joey alone since she helped protect her. Part of Abigail’s story was that her father was never there for her and this is why she lured people in. She wanted to get his attention by tricking people into kidnapping her before she began her games with them. These games never worked in attracting her father’s attention, but she always hoped they would.
Joey and Abigail’s relationship was interesting from the start. Joey genuinely wanted to protect her (until the reveal), and ultimately ended up helping Abigail survive. Another interesting tidbit is that Joey gave small details about her life to Abigail when wanting to connect with the girl, letting Abigail know about the son she barely saw. Joey took this gig to get money and reunite with him to become a better mother. When Joey is about to leave the mansion, Abigail tells her that as long as she shows up, that’s the thiing that counts. Even through all of the events that happened, I thought that this was a nice sentiment for both Abigail and Joey. They got to each experience a little bit of what they were missing; Abigail wanted someone to pay attention to and protect her while Joey wanted to be a better parent to her kid. Abigail was able to help Joey realize what she needed to do and Joey could see that she was capable of it.
(Quick sidebar: I didn’t forget that Joey is still a horrile person for putting a seemingly human child into this situation. No matter how it would have turned out, a human Abigail would have left with some trauma at the very least.)
Overall, even with the “”twist” near the end, I rated this movie 3 ½ stars. I love vampires and was happy to see a somewhat different take on them. There were few things that I thought could have been different or fleshed out more, but it was a fun film. I loved the comedic relief and the fact that even Abigail wasn’t taken super seriously. At one point, the team walks in with her dancing with the headless corpse of Dean and while we should be sad about Dean’s unfortunate death, it was kind of funny. Exploring Abigail’s love for ballet would have been nice too since the film opens with her performing ballet and she uses it as she chases the team around the mansion.
The end of the film has me questioning whether or not there will be more films to come. Prequels would be interesting because we do get a story about her father at some point when the team is describing why he is so scary. Abigail also hits Joey with a “See you around,” and I wonder if the two will ever come into contact with one another again.
And that’s it. That’s my review on Abigail. I would love to see this universe explored if they choose to release more films. If you’ve seen this film, what’re your throughts? If not, would you like to see it?
If you’ve read this far, I’d like to thank you so much! And comment a gif of your favorite vampire film. I don’t think I’ve seen many and would love to check out more!
🔪Versa
I have Abigail, if anyone would Luke to watch it at some point, I don't mind watching it again,.
Water burbles
From Dusk til Dawn is probably my favorite vampire movie, but Twilight is a close second lol. I've definitely got Abigail on my to-watch list though.