In 1907, expert in twisting tales O. In his short fiction The Ransom of Red Chief, Henry describes kidnappers who end up having to pay the brat’s family to get their victim back because he is so annoying. It has had numerous official and unauthorized adaptations, including Yasujiro Ozu and Howard Hawks’s. Abigail puts it in a fresh way. In a vicious how-not-to-be-typecast-for-ever turn as Matilda from Matilda the Musical, 12-year-old ballerina Alisha Weir reveals that she is actually an extremely disturbed vampire with major father issues.
It’s a little problematic that trailers and advance publicity present the revelation at the end of the first act as the main idea while also revealing it. The film, cleverly written by Guy Busick and Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground), effectively teasing for thirty minutes. The first act initially seems like a gloomy parody on Reservoir Dogs, but there’s a strong clue that the theme music—which is accompanied by a solo ballet turn—is that snippet of Swan Lake heard at the opening of Dracula in 1931. In order to carry out an abduction, Mastermind Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) assembles a motley crew of imperfect specialists, insisting they have no prior knowledge of one another and assigning them Rat Pack code identities.
A welcome addition to the triad of tween-impersonating killing robots, alongside the Orphan and M3GAN.
Assuming the roles of smart-aleck medic Joey (Melissa Barrera) and Sherlock Holmes, the group determines that muscle Peter (Kevin Durand), an ex-military man, is Quebecois, sniper Rickles (William Catlett) is an ex-cop, hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton) is a rich kid rebel, and wheel man Dean (Angus Cloud) is a sociopath. They are so fed up with the quarreling group that they fail to see that Abigail has been taken to her own home and used as a hiding place. The eerie old home is a death trap with its hidden tunnels, corpse repository in the basement, and metal “you’re-fucked” window shutters.
Abigail confesses, under duress, that she is the big shot’s daughter, whose terrifying reputation makes her seem like a cross between Dracula and Keyser Soze. She eventually grows tired of acting human and launches an intense, athletic biting frenzy. With Ready Or Not (written by Busick), co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who previously worked with Barrera on the Scream revivals, made their horror film debut. Here, they return to the pursuit scene in a haunted mansion, complete with splatter humor and witty, desperate banter. There are a few more surprises to come once the vampire card is dealt. Future researchers studying horror films may wonder why people in our time were so afraid of creatures resembling young girls, but Abigail is a welcome addition to the Orphan and M3GAN’s trio of tween-like killer robots.