Abigail (2024) She's precious.....she's adorable.....she's a 12 year old ballerina with Barishnikov skills.....
jOops, forgot to mention she's also a razor-toothed vampire who'll pirouette into right into your neck for lunch.....
Well, nobody's perfect. Don't hold me closer, tiny dancer.....
To their everlasting agony, Abby's motley crew of kidnappers discover it won't be easy collecting a ransom from the little girl's Daddy More-Bucks.
And now they're all trapped in Daddykin's mansion where Abigail's declared open season on them......and her blood bank deposits start piling up faster than Trump's legal bills.....
Not a bad setup for a horror movie, we'll agree......
And we kind of admire the film's third act, unleashing gore by the gallons with multiple twists about what the true motives behind all this carnage.
The cast certainly gives it their all......Melissa Berrara as the designated Final Girl (that's no spoiler since her character's the only one with a drop of humanity).....Dan Stevens as the gang's high-strung, anger management deprived Alpha Male.....the late Angus Cloud as an addled slurring druggie (a sad harbinger of his real life passing)...Katherine Newton as the gang's lighter-than-air techie....Giancarlo Esposito as the supposed mastermind string puller and a couple of other non-entities who are just there to up the body count and not worth detailing......
Oh, did we mention the gore? Literally oceans of red corpuscles and entrails are flung at the cast with the same random enthusiasm as the green slime spewed on to celebrities at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards.
We started to nurse suspicions that hurricane flood level charnel house stuff is meant to provoke more laughs than 'ewwwwws!'. As is the sight of the nimble Abigail using ballet moves whenever she zeroes in on fresh meat.....
Which leads us to declare 15 year old Alisha Weir (the singing dancing lead of 'Matilda-The Musical') as the film's MVP. In a dream role for any actor, she projects innocence, animal cunning and dazzling dance mastery........not to mention a set of teeth to equal to Spielberg's shark.
Fun for all hardcore horror buffs......we're hoping Abigail comes back in a sequel to perform 'The Nutcracker'......
If she does, hold on to your nuts. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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