'Abigail': When a movie doesn't know how to end
I forgot I saw this after 4 hours...
(Spoilers ahead)
Abigail is the latest slasher to be unleashed on the world, opening last weekend. The film was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directors behind 2019’s Ready or Not, and you can seriously tell they’re trying to ride off that high.
Credit: Universal Pictures (2024)
I wanted to begin with a positive, discussing aspects of the film I loved. Alisha Weir was phenomenal in this role, being only 13 when they filmed this. She gave such a compelling performance, not only being able to play a believable innocence but switching up so fast to a meticulous and malicious force. She very clearly has a bright future ahead of her, being able to outshine a stacked cast at such a young age.
The film is genuinely haunting at points, where the horror elements shine through. A notable example that hasn’t left my mind is the sequence where we see Abigail dancing with Dean’s headless corpse on a small stage. We see the others watch in horror as they realise what’s going on, which leads me to a third positive; the character development is great, given the circumstances. To reiterate what Chris Stuckmann said in his review of the film, the writers have ever so cleverly managed to create so much heart in characters that aren’t meant to give away their identities. They reveal just enough to have us care, but not enough to maintain the mystery.
However, the mystery of the characters might be where the mystery ends; the film’s downfall began with its marketing misstep.
I hope and I pray that there are people who go into this blind, as the trailers have given absolutely everything away. Sure, I still had fun! Who wouldn’t have fun at a film like this? It just would have been that much better if they had managed to keep the reveal under wraps in their marketing, and maybe even in their title. I can’t stop thinking about how they could’ve had such a fun title, similar to Ready or Not.
But maybe they should stop trying to be Ready or Not; an issue that became very prevalent in the film’s final act. It just does not know when (or how) to end. Continuously trying to recreate the final moments of Ready or Not, except on loop. Even down to the shots of ‘Joey’ leaving the mansion resembling Samara Weaving leaving in Ready or Not. If I had taken a shot every time somebody exploded with beat-for-beat vfx to Ready or Not, I don’t think I would be writing this review.
Credit: Universal Pictures (2024)
The film’s final fight lasted for what felt like an eternity. Just as I thought we were drawing to a close, another character showed up, or another irrelevant plot twist. I’m shocked ‘Joey’ could still walk after the amount of times she was thrown against walls, stabbed and violently pushed to the ground by characters with superhuman strength. These fights are supposed to be the biggest and most exciting part of these films, especially since the emergence of the ‘final girl trope’, but after the third or maybe fourth back-to-back fight, I was so unamused.
This sloppy final act is what drags the film down, especially considering a lot of these slashers rely on entertaining their audience; the last thing they want to do is bore somebody. It feels like such a shame, this could have been so much more fun and had the potential to be a future cult classic, in a similar vein to how I feel we will look back on Ready or Not; but instead, we were given something I had forgotten I watched that day.
Reference list
Abigail . (2024). Universal Pictures.
Ready or Not . (2019). Searchlight Pictures.
Stuckmann, C. (2024). Abigail - Movie Review. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at:
[Accessed 25 Apr. 2024].