Review: ABIGAIL

A precision hi-tech kidnapping in which the perps don't even know each others' names. The little girl is taken to the hideout (a large country mansion) and they are told by their host that they now just have to take care of the girl while the ransom is negotiated. There's a bar and a kitchen and rooms they can use. He even gives them nicknames so they can call each other something. He leaves them to it and when they hit the bar they get both loose and restless. There's already a simmer, no one likes the others, and it looks to go all the way to boil. But there's something else: that girl really might not be what she seems.

The trailer for this spoils one of the major plot points of this film and I'm not going to repeat it. If you can go in without it, do so and this will be a lot more fun. Suffice to say, once the thread is taken up it's held tight in this high action comedy thriller. With nods to Agatha Christie (very funny reference in the kind of library shelf that makes an appearance in Christie novels) and caper crime movies of the '70s and '90s as well as a few horror tropes, Abigail yet holds its own in being neither self conscious nor overly generic.

A cast that includes Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens (in great form) and Kathryn Newton offers a unit of types with just enough individuality to tell them apart and expect behaviour from them. The real turn, though, is Alisha Weir in the title role, who takes her character from heart rending innocence to raging terror, handling both physical gags and well wrought monologues with a grin that could freeze at twenty paces.

Apart from that there's not a great deal to say about this film but by that I mean that it does its job. If there's a flaw it's a needless stodging of the pace in the second act that has a slight dampening effect on the final scene. It's not that serious but if you know (which you do, now) that this is the same Radio Silence team that made the dizzyingly wonderful Ready or Not you might wonder where that commitment to constant energy went. If Abigail had done a skerrick more to justify this by deepening the theme or adding weight to the action the problem would be unnoticeable.

However, the charm of this movie is that it really doesn't pretend to be more than it is and what it does provide that works, works a treat. After the bludgeoning of ironic filmmaking of the last thirty years which pushed its winks and nudges at its audiences, it's refreshing to find more recent fare free of such burdens. Abigail, like the little girl dancing to an empty auditorium during the opening credits, a luxury version of ballet practice, is happy just to
entertain.