--- title: "Abigail (2024)" subtitle: "Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-04-06 08:00 date: 2025-04-06 08:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: film-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: culture tag: [ movie, cinema, horror, review ] --- I recently saw the movie **Abigail** (2024), and these are my notes about it. This isn't a review, it's really just so I remember what the movie was about 3 months from now. This post does contain spoilers. Cutting to the chase: **Abigail** is an OK horror movie that starts strong and then levels out and ends up being a fairly weak monster combat simulator. ## Plot A team of specialists has been assembled. Their mission: kidnap the young daughter of a famous diplomat-or-something and hold her for ransom. At first, everything goes as planned. They get in, they grab the girl, they make the get-away, and they arrive at the old abandoned mansion that'll serve as their hideout. Nice and clean. Now all they have to do is wait. Half a dozen hardened criminals camping out in a spooky old mansion with nothing to do but bide their time until morning inevitably brings a delivery of a huge ransom. What could possibly go wrong? That's the setup, and it's executed perfectly. You get an introduction to the characters, you start to sense the strengths and weaknesses of each one, you see the hints of stress in the relationships, the distrust, the potential for betrayal. And that's _before_ the rumours start. It seems that the kidnapped girl has a very powerful father. Scary powerful. Nobody can say exactly what the threat is, but this guy is dangerous. Maybe it was a mistake to get involved in a plot going against him. Come to think of it, why did the guy who put this team together just leave the mansion, locking them all inside? And come to think of it further, nobody on this team knows each other so how can anyone be trusted? ## Twists and turns Obviously this movie is mixing genres, and I generally really like that, or at least in theory I do. I like it when a movie starts from a strong established premise and then introduces horror to it. You get the best of both worlds. Well, that's the theory. Sometimes you don't get the _best_ of both worlds, you just get both worlds. That's the case here, at least for me. It turns out that the dangerous father is a run-of-the-mill vampire. So is the daughter. They're both actually really old and really powerful. So it's weird when one of the main characters becomes a vampire near the end of the movie and nearly kills the daughter. Ancient evil up against somebody who's had vampire powers for 5 minutes? No contest! After the mystery is revealed, the movie suffers the [half-way horror curse](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/culture_half-way-horror-curse). It necessarily shifts gears into a slightly boring vampire slasher. Humans die, vampires do vampire things, the rules for how vampire powers work change as required by the plot, and so on. Maybe if you're a really rabid vampire fan, this will still work for you, but I lost interest and only got through the second half of the film by playing it in the background as I worked on other things. ## An OK movie The opening was strong and full of intrigue, but ultimately the introduction of horror turned out to be uninspired. I think there's a theoretical version of this movie that works really really well, though. The ideas are there, the characters are strong, the possibility for manipulation of both the audience and the in-world characters is huge. It didn't happen for this version of the story, though.

Lead photo by Anika De Klerk on Unsplash