Abigail Review: Dracula's Daughter is a Delight
Radio Silence craft a blood-soaked way back to the Dark Universe
Though Universal’s Dark Universe officially ended in 2017, the studio hasn’t truly said goodbye to new ways of utilizing their classic horror characters, whether that’s in the eerie Invisible Man of 2020 or the recent Dracula-centric feature Renfield from 2022. It’s Drac himself that seems to be getting the most mileage these days, between Renfield, The Last Voyage of the Demeter and the upcoming Abigail. It is the last, though, that tries to distance completely from Dracula and tell a story all its own.
Loosely inspired by 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter (and, by loosely, I mean the only commonality is the title character is a vamp’s kid), Abigail tells the story of a gang of kidnappers who snatch the eponymous ballerina-loving character, played with such glee and relish by Alisha Weir. When they discover Abigail is not all she appears to be, the group must find a way to stay alive while trapped in a house they can’t escape.
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are no strangers to houses with twists and turns and characters who you root for in spite of their dark motivations. If you’ve watched their fabulous 2019 thriller Ready or Not, much of Abigail will feel like old home week right down to the ending scene that will no doubt be memed in later years.
From the outset you care about the cadre of kidnappers you’ll be spending the next 90 minutes with, from the emotionally haunted Joey (Melissa Barrera) to the Gen Z techie Sammy (Katherine Newton). Even the girl crazy Dean (the late Angus Cloud) gets the audience on his side for the amount of time he’s in the movie. The script wastes no time in setting things up. The characters meet, they snatch the child and after a brief introduction from Giancarlo Esposito — which should have been their first clue things were doomed to go wrong — the rules are set in motion: the crew members aren’t meant to know anything about each other nor are they allowed to ask who Abigail’s father is. They have to watch her until the next morning. They’re “babysitting” and that’s it.
But, of course, nothing goes according to plan and just as quickly as the group start to bond they start disappearing one by one. Melissa Barrera’s Joey is the fulcrum, the kind heart that everyone revolves around and she certainly makes an impact. Joey’s perceptiveness highlights her intelligence as well as her own inner demons that are desperate to come out. Her interactions with Weir’s Abigail are charming, playing on the stereotypes of the kindhearted kidnapper and their victim, only to see that upended once the playing field is flipped.
This is Weir’s film and the young Matilda: The Musical star is pitch-perfect as the title vampire. Whether she’s doing pirouettes over dead bodies or just calmly stating things about her father while covered in blood, Weir makes the audience believe she’s a child vampire who has lived decades. And I don’t mean she acts like Kirsten Dunst in Interview With a Vampire, acting like a 40-year-old woman in a child’s body (not to besmirch that performance). Instead, Weir plays Abigail like a woman who has been treated like a child and thus gives people what they want. She’s petty and petulant, but never immature.
She’s a good foil for Barrera’s Joey, though the rest of the cast get their own moments to shine. Newton and Kevin Durand are solid supporting characters as Sammy and the sweet, muscle-bound Peter, respectively. Each character could be one-note but without stopping the movie to give them in-depth characterization you get just enough to hope they make it out alive. Newton, in particular, is a very fun character. And then there’s Dan Stevens’ Frank, the leader of the group. Stevens has played hard-hearted dicks before but here is on another level. Frank is motivated purely by self-interest and yet is stuck with people he feels are beneath him. He delivers a line in here that I promise you will stick with me till the end of 2024.
The film’s biggest slip-up comes in its finale, wherein a series of power imbalances goes on far too long. Abigail ends up getting waylaid, leaving the final battle to be between two of the kidnappers in a way that never feels as strong and devolves into repetition. Thankfully it recovers quickly with the directing duo throwing so much fake blood on their characters as to drench them, head to toe, in red. There’s also a cameo that is fairly head-scratching but kind of had to support.
Abigail continues Universal’s hot streak of telling inventive new stories with their Universal monster characters. Alisha Weir is amazing, as is the rest of the cast. If anything I hope it compels audiences to check out Dracula’s Daughter. Gory, gruesome and fun as hell.
Abigail is in theaters April 19.