Abigail was labeled as a “B-movie,” but it goes above and beyond the cliche, making a highly entertaining horror movie.
Abigail (2024), on paper, looks like an average horror movie. Some even labeled it as such. And that’s kind of what I felt going into it—that it was just going to be an entertaining but lacking substance and staying power horror movie. One of those you watch for fun, but probably never watch again. But I was mistaken, and I’m glad I was. Abigail (2024) is highly entertaining, surprising, and a great ride. It was so fun watching in theaters to see everyone’s reaction around me. It’s a great movie to watch in a group.
There are so many twists and turns, each surprising the other. There are also some pretty laugh-out-loud moments in it. I’m not the biggest fan of horror comedies, but Abigail (2024) does a good job of having some good situational humor. A lot of the characters are smartasses, so their wit is on point and very funny.
Abigail (2024) is pretty simple to follow. You have a group of criminals working as a crew for the first time, and they are kidnapping a little girl. Holding her hostage, they will hold out to give her back to her father for a large amount of money. After the kidnapping, they are to stay in this isolated mansion for 24 hours. So basically, the whole movie takes place in this mansion. You could call it mansion horror.
Eventually, they find out this little girl is a vampire, and they are going to have to fight for their survival. It’s a pretty basic plot, but it goes a long way with how they figure out how to survive. Each character is different from the others. Even though some of them are cliches, it’s fun to see some of those cliches play out. Some characters are written better than others, but this isn’t necessarily a film where you’re going to pay attention to that as much.
I won’t go into which character is which cliche or who they are, because that was kind of fun going into it. You figure out who they are, or so you think, and get surprised by some revelations later in Abigail (2024).
As I said before, Abigail (2024) excels at being entertaining. It’s hard to make a film all in one location fun, and they did a great job with this one. The mansion is a character of its own in the film. It’s nice because we still see new parts of the mansion throughout the film. Just when we thought we’d seen every location or every spot in it, we learned about a new spot.
The characters are definitely what keep this movie rolling. If they were not written as well, Abigail (2024) would’ve been pretty flat. You have the witty dialogue and the good exchanges between them that are entertaining. If the characters had no chemistry and no humor, this movie would not be good at all. But the exchanges are so witty and so funny, and that is where this film excels. It does a perfect job of delivering a story while still being as entertaining as any other movie.
I think this is a great staple on how to make simple, fun horror. It does lean heavily on comedy, so if that’s not your thing when it comes to horror, you might not like it as much. But it has some gross-out moments in the film. Those moments are kind of Quentin Tarantino-type. For me, that is more than welcome, and it added to the fun factor of this movie. I think the film knew exactly what it was doing and did just that. It has some great self-aware moments.
An example is when the one where the characters realize that they’re in the presence of a vampire. They begin referring to vampire movies like Twilight to try to figure out how to kill this vampire. When other movies expose something insane, like a vampire or a monster, they just go with it. In this movie, there isa debate as to whether it’s a vampire or not. This scene was hilarious, as the audience could relate to the situation. Of course, vampires aren’t real, but it is fun to think of how we would react if we saw one. A lot of the film includes funny but genuine reactions.
I had to give a special shout-out to one great scene. Abigail (2024) had an awesome moment when they played a song by Danzig, who is one of my favorite artists. The film had great music throughout, but this scene was pretty awesome, as it dedicated a whole scene to a ballerina-type dance to a ballad-hard rock song. It was filmed very well.
While I have mentioned that Abigail (2024) has its funny moments, I would say it’s scary and intense when it needs to be. It’s hard to compare it to anything else, as I don’t think a lot of horror films do a great job of mixing comedy. Of course, I think the gold standard for horror comedy is the Evil Dead series. And if you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll like Abigail (2024). It has that nice over-the-top feel, but is still a good, grounded story.
It is worth bringing up that this was Angus Cloud’s last film. Angus Cloud is known for his performance in Euphoria. He filmed his scenes in Abigail (2024) right before the SAG Strike shut down films. I will say he’s not in the film for as long, but this is expected. But he was so good. He made the first little bit of the movie fun.
It’s extremely sad to see young talent go so young. As far as I know, this was one of his bigger movie roles. In this film, we show that he could be a great character in a survival or slasher horror movie. At the end of the film, they gave him a nice tribute in the credits.
Of course, with any film, they’re small things to nitpick. But beyond that, I think my only complaint was the ending. It felt like it was building something bigger than what we saw. I wanted something better because the film had been building up so well. The end is still good, though.
All the actors did a great job in their roles. I’d also like to bring up the fact that Kathryn Newton was in the film as well. She is slowly becoming a scream queen. She was just recently the lead in the Lisa Frankenstein horror film. It seems the horror community is starting to pick up that she is going to be a major star in the horror scene for years to come.
Abigail (2024) is a welcome entry in the vampire horror movie series. It breathes a lot of new life into a dry genre as of late. After the major Twilight series, it seems like vampire movies haven’t been as big. But Abigail (2024) is invigorating, and maybe they’ll make a sequel. I enjoyed this film, as it kind of snuck up on all of us. Most of us expected an average horror film, but we were blown away and thoroughly entertained from front to back.
I really can’t recommend this movie more if this is your kind of film. Be sure to see it in theaters or, at the very least, watch it with a group at home when it comes out on streaming.
