Abigail
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Written by Stephen Shields, Guy Busick
Starring Alisha Weir, Dan Stevens, Melissa Berrera, Kathryn Newton
Rated R
Runtime: 109 minutes
In theaters April 19

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

Sir Basil Humphrey: The woman is beautiful.
Prof. Von Helsing: She was beautiful when she died, a hundred years ago.
–Dracula’s Daughter, 1936

While monsters are a major part of the company’s legacy, Universal has struggled to capitalize on them in the last few decades, with only a few movies being either major successes or critical darlings. This despite many attempts over the years, including two Dracula movies in 2023 alone. And while I absolutely adore the Brendan Fraser incarnation of The Mummy and Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, they both stray from the core “monster” concept in their own respective ways. But Abigail feels like it is reviving that tradition, while also adding in elements of the slasher for a mix of classic and contemporary feels. 

We meet our principal cast as they are breaking into a house and kidnapping a 12-year-old girl after she arrives home from an evening ballet practice. Assigned Rat Pack-based pseudonyms by their employer, Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), the team–including Joey (Melissa Berrera), Frank (Dan Stevens), and Sammy (Kathryn Newton)--is told to stay in the safehouse where they have brought the girl for 24 hours while he blackmails her father for $50 million. Over the course of babysitting the girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir), they discover that she is a vampire. Killing, bloodsucking, and vampiric mischief ensue, of course. 

The perpetual youth vampire is a hallmark of American vampire stories, thanks to Anne Rice and James Jeremias (screenwriter of The Lost Boys), and Abigail fits nicely alongside them. Veering away from some of the more tragic elements of that state of being, Abigail embraces the dissonance of a 12-year-old immortal. While she is an unrepentant killing machine, she also acts like a young girl, alternatively menacing and using her outward appearance in manipulative ways to trick her prey or play them against each other. Weir’s performance is impressive throughout, and she makes a formidable and interesting villain despite being such a young actor. Ballet is clearly a hobby for this centuries-old kid, and it delightfully is reflected in all of her movements, which also emphasizes her small size and youthful appearance. 

The overall tone here is playful, similar to the most recent Scream movies from the same directors as well as the 2011 Fright Night remake. Abigail is not trying to be overly clever or showy, but executes a fairly tight script. We are given the essential pieces of information about all of the characters in fun ways, and there are no flashbacks or unneeded exposition weighing down the brisk pacing. Borrowing from the slasher plot structure is a smart move for an updated take on a Dracula movie, and watching each of the kidnappers get picked off by Abigail as they try to use their vampire knowledge from pop culture to kill her is delightfully entertaining. 

While not particularly deep or trying to reinvent the wheel, Abigail executes its ideas well. The filmmakers clearly have a lot of affection for the classic monster movies and understand what made them scary to audiences almost a century ago. So many attempts at Dracula and Frankenstein movies get bogged down in too much worldbuilding, while Abigail and Lisa Frankenstein take the familiar elements from those stories and remix them to make something that feels both familiar and new. Or maybe, when in doubt, hire Kathryn Newton?