Abigail: Movie Review

Cast: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Alisha Weir, Kevin Durand, Kathryn Newton, Angus Cloud, Giancarlo Esposito, William Catlett

Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

Meshing comedy and horror is not an easy proposition.

Push it too far and the horror stakes feel slight; push it too far the other way, and the comedy seems trite.

So for the large part of Abigail, a film about a group of would-be criminals kidnapping a 12 year-old ballet dancer and holding her to ransom, the premise proves to be the biggest hook - and also the high-wire act the Radio Silence Production team seems set on balancing on.

But a final act that descends too far into silliness and relies too much on the comedy robs the film of some of the more delicious tension that's been drawn out by a minimal script and some genuine scares.

The group - which comprises such loosely drawn stereotypes as the spaced out druggie (Euphoria's Cloud in his last ever role), the dumb muscle for hire (Durand, most of the comic relief), the anti-heroine (Barrera, eminently watchable) and the tough-talking guy (Stevens, easily one of the best things of the film) - make for solid enough companions, but the film's script spends too long drawing out thin details from exposition and talky-filled dumps of screentime to make you really care about any of them or their mysterious pasts. (And a potential love interest is drawn out early on, only to become a narrative thread thrown away, withered and untended to.)

Abigail is far more successful when it simply concentrates on the basics of the story - a group of dimwits being outclassed and outmanoeuvred by an initially unknown enemy.

Weir hisses, dances and menaces as much as she can - but an over-reliance on visual tics a la M3GAN and Swan Lake perversely shows the film's weaknesses as well as its singular strength - it has flashes of brilliance, but much of it seems to be snatched from other films as it can't quite build on its central idea.

Ultimately, Abigail is a movie where sometimes the differing tones violently clash and crash against each other as the B-movie constraints play out - but if you're willing to forego the plot's fallibilities, the thin character edges and a truly unnecessary finale where it's not just the scenery that's chewed on, Abigail may just be the fun time you're looking for at the movies.