Universal Pictures

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From the creatives at Radio Silence that brought to life the delightful horror/comedy Ready or Not comes their latest bit of cinematic fun Abigail.

If you have seen the trailers, then you know the core concept: a gang of professional criminals kidnap a young girl in hopes of a massive payoff but discover to their horror that she is in fact a vampire and they must now fight to survive their criminal enterprise.

The film and the trailer, with their tongue pressed firmly into their cheek, makes liberal use of music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake a nod to Universal granddaddy of Vampire films 1931’s Dracula which used the ballet’s themes as its score.

The film is led by Melissa Barrera as ‘Joey’ the most sympathetic member of the kidnapers and who displays the most concern for Abigail before they learn of the girl’s true monstrous nature. Joey contends for leadership of the gang against ‘Frank’ (Dan Stevens) a former police officer and the most hardened of the criminals.

Abigail, like Ready or Not before leans more towards the comedic than the horrific. The writers and directors display an utter lack of concern with the quantities of cinematic blood that they explode across their frames. There are twists within the simple and contained plot of the film but none that aren’t easily deduced from clues contained with the movie’s trailers. The film can be seen as the love child of The Usual Suspects and an over-the-top Hammer movie.

The cast is uniformly good with particularly standout performances from Kevin Durand as ‘Peter’ the dimwitted muscle of the group and Alisha Weir as the title character Abigail. Weir shows remarkable range for so young a performer going to terrified child to threatening monster in the space of a breath.

Abigail is a not a deep film that comments on the ineffable nature of the human condition but rather is something fun the be experienced and enjoyed. The filmmaking is clever and competent enough that things are established but not so blatantly as to be obvious. This is a film that will be best enjoyed in a theater with a crowd of people laughing and screaming with the rapid onscreen escapades.

Abigail is currently player in theaters.