Abigail: A Blood-Soaked Twist On Home Alone With Teen Vampire Ballerina

Imagine if Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone was not just a brat who could overcome homebreakers when his family was on a vacation, he was actually a vampire! Man, that would really suck.

Co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Abigail is founded on some heavily sanguinary props and a wickedly playful premise of a teen vampire who moonlights as a ballerina.

Once it is revealed that the little girl at the centre of this bloodied grisly version of Home Alone is a vampire, the entire procedure gets unbearably anxious to make a homicidal mess.

Heads are severed, limbs are chopped off. Blood flows from gaping wounds and vomiting mouths. Hell, my stomach turns even as I write about his wretched retch fest. My sympathies to the censor board which had to sit and snip the sickening content. What to cut? Actually, everything after the first twenty minutes which are the best part of the Stephen Shields and Guy Busick’s ‘joint’ screenplay.

Initially a prodigious ballerina is kidnapped by drug addict Joey (Melissa Barrera), former cop Frank (Dan Stevens), giggly hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton), former marine sniper Rickles (Will Catlett), mobster Peter (Kevin Durand) and the unhinged Dean (Angus Cloude). This bunch of kidnappers’ early conversation have a snappy edgy tenor.

Yup, there is potential for a decent heist thriller here, all squandered in squishy rivulets of blood and gore. After a while we are left wondering who will lose his head or her hand next.

As Abigail, 14-year old Irish actress Alish Weir reminded me of Linda Blair from Omen. From Blair to Weir, I must say the child demon has undergone plenty wear and tear. Weir seems to have fun with her ballerina vampire’s part. But we are never allowed to participate in the fun part of her wickedness.

If only the screenplay didn’t take itself so seriously! The actors are not incompetent, simply not wired for fun. They rattle off their who-will-die-next lines with way too much gravity. They forget they are in this for the rollercoaster ride.

In fact my favourite go-to line in this vapid vampirical brew is when somebody mutters, “Agatha fuc..ing Christie!” drawing attention to the script’s origins in Agatha Christie’s whodunits and how far the genre has travelled from its source.

Apart from its intrinsic doltishness and unstoppable bloodshed, the issue of making a 14-year-old child do and say such crass things is also bothersome. I wonder what young Ms Weir’s parents were doing when she was flying around the set—sometimes literally—doing a Dracula on her co-stars. Back in school, was Ms Weir teased by her friends with, ‘Alisha sucks’?

The one-home setting suggests a low-budget project, although the dark sinister ominous camerawork (Aaron Morton) attempts to lend a lush personality to what is otherwise a B-grade thriller with A-grade ambitions.