After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an...
For better and for worse, 'Abigail' reveals a closer affinity to 'Renfield' than I initially considered: this blood cocktail wants to be so many things at once and only succeeds at being half of them and just like 5CREAM, finds itself too eager to lick its own lips.
Radio Silence have a way of being shrewd with out-there projects; they’re more comfortable working with a heightened tone and silly theatrics with little to no restraint in their directing style. There’s plenty of kooky playfulness to go around but I think they went backwards with the metaness in this one and tried a little too hard.
Production design has more personality than any of the characters do but considering how its elaborate mini-escape room, amusement park-esque, gothic design feels ripped straight out of a Resident Evil game, that’s almost a no-brainer. You would swear they walked in on the wrong film set but they do just enough with the setting to make it feel like it matters in the grand scheme of the film’s context.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the cinematography carries over that same lavish and dexterity. Sure, it’s coked up on raucous energy to spare and there’s nothing objectively wrong with the framing but some scenes feel over-edited strictly for the sake of immersion and it has the opposite effect by the time we get to the killing.
There’s like this constant push-pull magnetic barrier between its momentum stalling and going full throttle another minute which does hamper that balance between tongue-in-cheek acuity and outright absurdity in its tone. Mood and atmosphere, at least, are appropriately unsettling like the spiritual successor to Dracula’s gothic vibe and aura, comedy is severely hit or miss and Brian Tyler’s score tries to knit those aggravating tonal shifts together to mixed results.
And it is so relentless in earning its stripes as a R-rated feature. Very gory and grotesquely pulpy with its kills and nifty practical effects.
Once again, the characters here are stock placeholders with barely enough personality to decipher between them but at the VERY LEAST, they lean into their respective roles with gusto, come out much more likable or memorable as a result and make the best use out of dialogue that starts off passable but quickly turns stunted, bland and discordantly sappy.
Melissa Barrera and Dan Stevens make the most out of the conventional material they’re dealt with but this movie BELONGS to Alisha Weir, her ability to oscillate between charming innocence and unsettling menace immediately usurping everyone else.
Quick summary of what this narrative entails: it’s The Lost Boys meets From Dusk Until Dawn with the flair of Panic Room……except with its brief splinters of delirious zaniness either muted or running on half-steam. This really should’ve been a lot more fun than it was; vampire movies are almost tailor-made to be a universal blend of kitsch campiness and schlocky nonsense, not really needing a tight script in order to be fully immersive and while the premise is meant to support that with its set-up, the entire thing feels weirdly superficial from the off-set. Nothing is wrong with the film not taking itself too seriously but toying with B-movie conventions and recombining familiar genre elements in this hodgepodge, this melting pot of mishmashed genres comes off nothing short of a rip-off potpourri than anything resembling a homage. I can look past how cheerfully unambiguous the entire narrative at play is just by itself but what really ticks me off is how quickly the story starts flaunting its bloody trump cards with all the pomposity of a suspiciously vainly frog splash.
“Sly twists and turns”, my ass; this movie is nowhere near as clever as it wants you to believe that it is and you’re talking to the same guy who lambasted 5CREAM for being needlessly annoying in trying to make itself smarter than it actually was. If you’ve seen the trailer, which a good 85% of you have, you know the twist going in, meaning there’s a full 35 minute preamble before you get to the actual fun stuff and even if you can stomach all that buildup, the narrative starts muddying itself in a bid to try and be “subversive”: significant plot holes conveniently pop up to violate just-established rules, characters start doing my least favorite trope by losing their brain cells to get the excuse train going and any degree of tension or suspense flies out the window the more detours it takes. Standoffs get repetitive once you notice ‘em and the more it tells rather than shows, the more obvious its already predictable rhythm gets. So much for a robust structure.
It barely feels cohesive enough to pass as a high concept/low-concept thriller, its obsession with drawing itself out for as long as possible leading to a story where the only real upside is that it’s never boring. But YOU WILL feel exhausted by the time the final act trudges to it’s nettling denouement which, at that point, they try to thread together a potentially intriguing but half-assed message about absentee parental figures and of appreciating people’s efforts to try and improve themselves from what they were before if they’re dedicated to that change; the kernels of a good theme, yes, but nothing is really done with it.
I suppose Abigail and Sting both have strict similarities in what it is and what it isn’t: it delivers exactly what the marketing promises and never tries hiding its intentions as a wannabe B-movie and the story’s setup is a big of a limited narrative palette as one could get, especially as they both telegraph their projected trajectories well in advance……but this one actively feels like everyone involved is having more fun despite the blunders. But even that illusion of fun is fleeting.
Radio Silence has me a bit adrift right now; what’s going on, guys?
