109 min | R | April 19, 2024 | Universal Pictures
Radio Silence makes a vampire movie disguised as a heist movie. A twelve-year-old ballerina murders a house full of criminals. The blood is everywhere and the fun is relentless.
A team of criminals kidnaps a young ballerina named Abigail. She is the daughter of a powerful crime lord. They hold her in a mansion and wait for the fifty million dollar ransom. Then they discover that Abigail is not the victim. She is a vampire. The mansion becomes a killing floor. The kidnappers become the prey. The premise is simple and the Radio Silence directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett execute it with the gory enthusiasm they brought to Ready or Not.
Alisha Weir plays Abigail with a performance that shifts from terrified child to gleeful predator with disturbing ease. She dances ballet while covered in blood. She taunts her captors with the politeness of a well-raised child who happens to be centuries old. The performance is a revelation. Melissa Barrera plays Joey, the kidnapper with a conscience who becomes the de facto final girl. Dan Stevens plays Frank with sleazy charm. Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, and Angus Cloud round out the criminal team with distinct personalities that give their deaths weight.
Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett understand confined-space horror. The mansion is the entire film and they use every room. The kills are creative and spectacularly bloody. The practical effects work is impressive. The film never takes itself seriously enough to become pretentious but takes itself seriously enough to build real tension. The pacing is tight. The humor is dark. The vampire mythology is kept simple and functional.
This is what studio horror can be when the filmmakers have a clear vision and the freedom to execute it. The film does not reinvent vampires. It puts them in a fun-house structure and lets the audience watch the inevitable unfold. Abigail is not deep. It is not trying to be. It is a bloody, funny, well-crafted genre film that delivers exactly what the premise promises.