Abigail review: A frequently funny dance of death

Like some unholy fusion of Resident Evil and Dance Moms, Abigail dares suggest that the only thing scarier than a haunted house is one that’s also occupied by a pissed-off tween ballerina with an emotionally absent, narcissistic parent. It’s not wrong, but there’ll be no Abby Lee Miller showing up to discipline the kid, or protect the dim-bulb adults in attendance from falling victim.

It is perhaps a shame that the entire marketing campaign for Abigail places its delicious end-of-first-act twist front and center. The film may play the big reveal as a surprise, but it won’t be one to most audiences now. Fortunately for them, that’s not the only unveiling the movie has in store. Like some of the characters, the script by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick only appears to start out as dunder-headed as every heist cliché in the book. A team of supposed experts, most of whom act barely smarter than Saturday Night Live sketch characters, kidnap a young girl. Like the gang in Reservoir Dogs, they get code names, here based on the Rat Pack. And to pass the time, they play a guessing game that turns into a blatantly obvious exposition dump.

Taking their victim to a secluded countryside mansion, the team makes perhaps the biggest first mistake anyone in a modern-day production can–they don’t turn tail and run away when Giancarlo Esposito shows up as their boss. They then proceed to break as many of the Scream rules of survival as possible, frequently splitting up and enjoying all the house’s free alcohol rather than paying attention to copious red flags… like the presence of Danzig II: Lucifuge on vinyl. (“Blood and Tears” finally gets the big-screen moment it deserves, though.)

Abigail the character (Matilda The Musical star Alisha Weir), like the screenplay, is more intelligent and devious than she appears, but there are more plot surprises than just her true nature. Again and again, the rug is pulled out from under the kidnappers, changing the dynamic and the stakes to make the audience wonder about way more than who’s going to die next. Most every character is to some degree a terrible person, so you won’t necessarily care that they’re in mortal danger, yet as further secrets come out, their fates do become at least mildly of interest.

For directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, billed collectively as Radio Silence, this feels as close to a Ready Or Not sequel as a movie gets without actually being one, and frankly, it’s better, and gorier, with more of a balanced cast. Godzilla X Kong’s Dan Stevens once again goes broad as dirty cop Frank; Kevin Durand has a blast playing Peter, the most idiotic Sylvester Stallone caricature imaginable; Angus Cloud gives a spaced-out take on a trollbot in human form as Dean; and Kathryn Newton plays her Hollywood hacker Sammy (long, unwashed dyed hair, with tattoos; you know the type) as a complete ditz. Somewhat more grounded are Melissa Barrera as ex-junkie and estranged mom Joey, and William Catlett as former Marine Rickles.

You could try to guess who’ll survive, and probably be right, but that’s not really the point. For a movie that loosely follows a slasher formula, Abigail invests you in the story more than any one individual. Sure, the set-up might fall apart if you think too hard about it, like how criminals this collectively moronic ever got anywhere prominent enough in the underworld to earn a job like this one. But if that’s where your head’s at when the blood starts flying and bodies start dropping, this was never going to be the movie for you. If you relish the absurdity as much as the tension, this could become a new, endlessly rewatchable horror-comedy classic, like Fright Night or The Lost Boys. The horror threat is never the butt of the joke—except to the extent that bodies exploding into ginormous tsunamis of gore is viscerally funny (pun intended)— but how the victims react is.

Weir’s spectacular, balletic moves and wiser-than-her-age taunts aside, the real star of the movie might just be the mansion (production design by I Kill Giants’ Susie Cullen), loaded with traps, foreshadowing, and clues that unfold the storyline with video game-like pacing – think cutscenes followed by enemy attacks. As characters open cupboards in creepy rooms, you hope they’ll find the power-ups they need, and fear they aren’t sufficiently expert players to survive the level.

The Scream franchise’s loss is Universal horror’s gain here, as Radio Silence and Barrera prove they don’t have to remain in Woodsboro to give audiences a creepy kick. Once intended as a remake of Dracula’s Daughter, Abigail evolved into its own thing, and fans of original horror ought to applaud. The former, honestly, isn’t all that great; the latter, figuratively and literally, dances rings around it.

Abigail opens in theaters on April 19