ABIGAIL (2024) **

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (AKA:  “Radio Silence”) reunited with their Scream star Melissa Barrera for this ho-hum crime thriller/vampire mash-up.  There’s a Reservoir Dogs-style setup where kidnappers are given aliases.  In this case, their names are all based on The Rat Pack.  Like From Dusk Till Dawn, the movie switches over from criminals to vampires on a dime.  It’s a slight variation on both of those Tarantino-written films, but without his wit or sense of fun. 

You see, the kidnappers were brought together to nab a crime lord’s daughter, Abigail (Alisha Weir).  After they snatch her, the hoodlums hunker down in an abandoned mansion and wait for the money to roll in.  They don’t realize the little girl is actually a vampire (and a ballerina), and that she has a habit of toying with her prey (or playing with her food as it were) before killing them. 

I’m not really spoiling anything because if you’ve seen the trailers, you already know the twist.  Unfortunately, that’s the only trick the movie has up its sleeve.  Even a film with a predictable twist can work if it’s done with style or humor, but after the big reveal, Abigail just doesn’t have anywhere to go.  Heck, even the Marvel-inspired surprise cameo at the end falls flat. 

The performances are fine.  Barrera is good as the heroine, Dan Stevens is fun as the smarmy bespectacled kidnapper, and Kathryn Newton is fetching as the computer whiz of the group.  Weir also does a solid job as the titular character, especially when she’s portraying an old person trapped in a young girl’s body. 

There’s plenty of blood to go around too, which is a good thing.  When a vampire bites the dust, they explode like a bag of cherry Gushers in the microwave.  It’s just a shame that’s about all the movie has to offer. 

Originally, this was going to be called Dracula’s Daughter and was intended as a sort of reboot of Universal’s “Dark Universe”.  Eventually, everybody just decided to make the movie a standalone feature.  I’m not sure how it would’ve played with the Universal connection (at least the final scene would’ve made more sense), but as an “original” work, it feels awfully derivative.  The fact that it features a killer kid with a penchant for dancing suggests the studio probably changed things up once they saw the box office receipts for M3GAN.  If that seems cynical… well… that’s kinda how watching Abigail makes you feel.