Long have I been intrigued by the macabre and paranormal. I love all things witchy, and Halloween is my favorite time of year. But as a self-proclaimed scaredy cat, I’ve had to be selective when it comes to horror movies. I’ve found I can’t stand anything with a true-crime element, because the more a movie is grounded in realism, the more terrified I become. However, for the most part, I really dig over-the-top exaggerated kills, particularly with a supernatural element.
Which is what made Abigail, now streaming on Prime Video, a perfect movie for me. I love vampires (yes, yes, it started from Twilight), but I am usually drawn to vampire stories that dig into relationships or keep the gore on the sexier end, à la “Winona Ryder licks blood from an open wound in Gary Oldman’s chest while they writhe in bed” as seen in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). But even without those overtones, I was intrigued enough by the promise of a murderous child vampire in Abigail. As it turns out, I also love vampires when they’re allowed to be totally and completely off the rails.
[Ed. note: This post contains slight spoilers for Abigail.]
From directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not and the last two Scream movies), Abigail starts off like a crime thriller: a group of criminals kidnap the titular 12-year-old daughter of an underworld mogul, intending to hold her for ransom in a dilapidated manor. But they soon realize they’re all locked inside the mansion, and the little girl is actually a sadistic vampire who enjoys playing with her food.
And play she does, using the creepy mansion and its dark passageways to her full advantage. It has all the typical haunted house set-pieces and then some, from an ornate library to a dark basement. And since this is Abigail’s territory, she flounces about (sometimes quite literally; she’s a ballerina as well) like it’s a playground, chasing the characters everywhere and keeping them constantly on their toes.
I like when vampires get to be vampire-y — when the myths and legends about them are interrogated, rather than just eye-rolled away. Abigail fully indulges in the vampire mythos of it all, and the characters get to be self-aware in a funny way rather than snarkily dismissing common vampire tropes.
For instance, after realizing that they’re trapped inside a death mansion with a vampire, the characters try to piece together what they know about the creatures of the night, including a hilarious gag where out-of-touch rich girl turned hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton) grabs a bag of onions, thinking that they’re garlic. One of the movie’s best showdowns involves the characters trying (and failing) to fight Abigail off using crucifixes and garlic, among other vampire repellents common in fiction.
The directors also constantly chose to go the coolest route when letting Abigail show off her powers. When she puppets her thrall, it kicks off with a warped version of Tchaikovsky’s main Swan Lake theme playing, before she does a full ballet dance, moving around the possessed body like a jerky marionette. It rules! I simply think more vampire media should have as much fun as Abigail when figuring out what to do with tired-and-true vampire tropes. I’m sick of vampire movies being embarrassed by themselves, and Abigail is never ashamed to be its ridiculous, bloody self.
The most valuable takeaway I learned from Abigail is that I can stomach a lot more blood and gore than I thought if it is (1) done in a campy, over-the-top way that could never feasibly happen in real life or (2) done by a lonely albeit unhinged 12-year-old vampire ballerina. Thankfully, Abigail has both. I realize that the second condition is very specific to this movie, but all of the incredibly bloody murders were just so much better because they were pulled off by a pint-sized tween in a tutu. What’s better than that?
Abigail is now streaming on Prime.