Abigail

There is nothing in this film that you haven't seen in a number of other films but it manages, thankfully, to deliver.

It doesn't for my money have as much humour as Ready or Not but does have enough character back story for the audience to know who to support and who to scorn and to emotionally commit to ( as much as you can in a horror flick).

You know what is going to happen once the basic premise is exposed and it's fun finding out how and when, and watching the whole thing play out.

At the centre of it all is Abigail, played expertly and delightfully by Alisha Weir who exploits this platform to showcase her undoubted talent. She is ably supported by the cast to realise this competent effort and make viewing it time well spent.

I believe the film is best watched without prior exposure to the trailer, hard as that is these days, and have also not revealed any content here in that spirit. Enjoy the film.

Now that I've seen this I can understand all the warnings on here to avoid the trailers and I can understand why. I had no idea what this was about other than it involved a young girl who is kidnapped, much to the eventual dismay of said kidnappers. Not having a clue where this was going help immensely with the surprise factor. This thing is good, bad, too long due to a back story, absolutely bonkers, wild, crazy, bloody, corny, gory, exciting and fun! Its setup is what I stated, but from there on in, you are on your own here. The cast is pretty good. The title character, the little girl, is wonderfully played by Alisha Weir. Dan Stevens plays one of the kidnappers and this guy is becoming a chameleon with his variety of roles. Here he is mean, internally ugly and pretty much a sleazeball type. Kevin Durand as a dim muscleman is funny as are a lot of things in this smorgasbord of a horror film. There are a few things that are just stupid, but it's a little hard to tell what is intentional as opposed to just poor writing. As I never watch TV anymore, I had never seen Angus Cloud before. Hard to tell much about him from this, but he does play a loser here very well. If you like horror films, ya gotta see this!

Everything in this movie is mediocre except the cinematography and the production design. I was looking forward to this due to me really liking Radio Silence's 'Ready or Not'. I was hoping for a fun horror comedy akin to that, but 'Abigail' ended up being as frustrating and obnoxious as their 2 'Scream' movies. It was however, better than 'Scream 5', but that's not saying much.

The acting all round is pretty bad. Dan Stevens is hamming it up, Melissa Barrera is a blank slate, but the worst performance by a mile is from Kathryne Newtown. Newtown has been bad in everything I've seen her in ('Detective Pikachu', the 'Death Note' remake), but here she's impressively awful, she can't even scream convincingly. The little girl is good for a child actress, but her dialogue is embarrassing lazy and stilted. She's the exact same kind of "toying with her victims" villain we've seen a million times before, now just in child form.

There are TWO 3-minute exposition scenes in this movie where a character just stops the film dead in its tracks, and explains everyone's backstory. It wouldn't be as unbearable if these characters weren't stock and unlikeable, but not one of them has an interesting backstory, so wasting this time trying to "flesh them out" ends up being a complete, cliched waste. Theres even a gag where the big "muscle" character screams like a little girl, as if we haven't seen that joke a million times before...

There were no engaging twists or revelations, and the characters were impossibly stupid. Unlike 'Ready or Not', where the lead character makes smart decisions, and the villains only make idiotic decisions because that's core to their character, the group in 'Abigail' are "professionals" who only make moronic decisions to further the contrived plot.

One aspect that surprised me was how many loud and amateur jump-scares there were. None of them were effective, and the editing is akin to something you'd expect from a horror short on YouTube. The sound design is particularly egregious and insistent, and all but one of the needle drops are total cringe. There's no moments of tension or thrill. I doubt even a 12 year old would find any of this scary.

It even uses the same exploding-bodies trick from 'Ready or Not', but in a much dumber and unsatisfying way. It even ends in the same way, with one character saying pretty much the exact same thing as Samara Weaving in 'Ready or Not'. It's just them playing the hits from their one good movie. There's not an original bone in this movie, despite it clearly insisting that it's some fresh, slick new take on vampires.

I've seen a lot of stuff these two directors have done, including their sections in 'Southbound' and 'V/H/S', and it's clear that Gillet and Bettinelli-Olpin only have one good movie in them, and that's mostly due to the fact that the premise in 'Ready or Not' is really hard to screw up. I don't ask for much, I've seen tonnes of tiny budget, straight-to-streaming comedy horrors that are far more inventive, funny and transgressive than this forgettable chore.

Enjoyable a day later, but on release as I was watching the movie, I kept expecting more. Some kind of twist and even a possible movie connecting during the ending. But alas, the movie is exactly what you see in the trailer. As a matter of fact, it's mostly what you see in the trailer. No surprises, no extra moments (except a very small surprise towards the end), just what you see is what you get.

I definitely did run a bit longer, I think they cut out that opening segmented and just start right away. It's Worth a watch if you have a season pass of some sort, but I wouldn't go out of my way compared to some others.

This is fun - almost in the style of Hammer. It's gory, but not scary. A clichéd plot and characters, but directed and acted with enthusiasm, and a good nod to classic vampire films. All the references were there, we were just missing Vincent Price and Christopher Lee and an over-coloured palette.

There was a tongue in cheek patina right across the film. I'm not sure why it was rated 18 in the UK - unless to protect people with an aversion to tomato sauce. The gore was done with explosive fun - a real splat fest.

This was surprisingly entertaining, done with gusto. Absolutely worth 90 minutes.