Abigail: Le Pouvoir de l'Élue

I love this movie; it's fantastical in almost all of the right ways, but I wish they'd rerelease it with the actors' original accents. I am highly disappointed with the dubbing. Original accents would add even more exotic magic.

"Abigail" is a Russian fantasy-adventure film with a good story and magnificent special effects. The director Aleksandr Boguslavskiy is absolutelly unknown for Western audiences and uses the surrealistic style of French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet on "La cité des enfants perdus" (1995), a.k.a. "The City of Lost Children". The huge buildings are typical in Eastern Europe and the city recalls a guetto in World War II. The authorities look like nazi officers and the epidemic that closes the borders of the city recalls most of the societies with the COVID-19 pandemic in the present days. The magic is a twist in the storyline and the flying machine is original. In the end, "Abigail" is neither a masterpiece nor what the IMDb reviews describe, but an entertaining movie for fans of the genre. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Abigail e a Cidade Proibida" ("Abigail and the Forbidden City")

The plot itself lacked ingenuity ,, the script looked all over the place ,, really hard to follow at some scenes and the story just disconnected .. add to that I watched it with some weird voice-over ,, so even they were speaking english their lips movement looked like they were speaking russian or something... so that piled up on my misery.

The acting was another disaster !! I mean goodness me !! with all the money spent on the visual effects (which were really good) you'd think they would spare a few grands for at least a B list actors !! ... The only actor I knew was Eddie Marsan who was there for like 10 minutes ,,and that says A LOT ...

I think this was a nice try by the young russian lad, Aleksandr Boguslavskiy, he had a great opportunity but he totally missed... But I personally believe if the movie was all Russian movie, like script, cast and all it would have looked much better.

Good film, liked the over all look and style. BUT everyone in the film is clearly speaking english as speech matches mouth movements yet everyone is dubbed in annoyingly unrealistic voices that don't match their character at all. I don't understand why they do this I would much rather someone speaking English with their native accent than the weird disembodied voices they have, made the film difficult to watch and take seriously and spoiled it massively. Would have given up and switched off if kid didn't seem to be enjoying it.

Ok, let's start with the good points...

1. Eddie Marsen - best actor in this film by a country mile 2. Visuals and cinematography are good.

Now the bad...

1. The dialogue is absolutely awful - no sentence of more than about 5 words and each line is spoken/shouted with really strange intonations. Seems to be dubbed and/or spoken by actors who just don't know what they are saying in English. 2. The script - a lot of the time it just does make any sense e.g. someone saying they don;t understand something when they were told it 5 minutes previously! Did anyone listen to this before it was released!! 3. All the acting (apart from Eddie Marsen of course) was wooden: no character or personality - they just barked each line of the script at each other in pseudo English (usually in a petulant manner for no obvious reason). 4. The story - apart from the start and end it simply lacked a clear direction for the most part.

In short, Eddie Marsen's great, visuals are good but if you speak English then this will be a painful experience.