Abigail (2024 vampire movie)

I'm not saying they're good people, but none of them deserves to be fed to vampires. Like I said, it is an interesting take on the genre to have the victims be criminals. It automatically makes them less sympathetic, so we start to root for the monster more.

However, with their interactions the film sets up each of the characters as someone who is broken or damaged in some way, and the more we know them the more we regard them as people who should probably be in prison but don't necessarily deserve to be murdered. (Well, I didn't miss Dean, but I suspect nobody else did either.)

Frank is a borderline case. At times he comes across as sympathetic, but he always reverts to asshole, and that is of course his fatal flaw.

I find it funny that all of these clowns were told, "You get a share of $50M if you go to this house and kidnap someone," but never asked who or why. That stretches my disbelief a little, but I'm hardly an expert on career criminals. Maybe blind jobs are normal in this kind of situation, who knows?

I'm also interested in the setting. I'm happy that at no point do we meet a vampire-hunter NPC who drops a lore dump; most of the world-building is simply implied. Okay, so we have elder vampires running criminal organizations and murdering people who cross them. That's all we get, and it's all we need to know. Bravo. As a bonus, it leaves lots of room for a franchise to develop.

Edit: Oh yeah, I totally forgot to say this last night. When I was thinking about the core plot of the movie, I was reminded of Bullet Train. A mob boss lures a set of career criminals into a Closed Circle situation so they can be killed for crossing him in various ways.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 21st 2024 at 11:25:36 AM

Horror movies have always had some moralism.

For example in the 80's and 90's, having sex before marriage or smoking marijuana was enough to be considered an Asshole Victim.

Edited by Luisdalas on Apr 21st 2024 at 8:31:01 AM

I think that was the point. Joey as the Final Girl is definitely meant to be the one we root for to live and other than Dean (God rest Angus Cloud) and Frank eventually too of course, we were supposed to root for these characters to not get killed while also admonishing the poor choices they made leading up to it too.

I mean Sammy shortly before she's killed has that moment when she's sitting with Joey and being comforted by her and then also has been bonding with Peter throughout the movie—to the point that she only kills him because Abigail takes her over. In fact, she only ends up killed in general because Joey's forced to to protect herself and Frank. It's meant to be an unfortunate turn of events in practically every way.

With Rickles, even though he and Dean are the ones who get the least amount of backstory, we're at least given the sense that much like Joey, he's only there because he feels he's completely run out of other options. We see most if not all these characters are in dire straits at the point when they took this job—or thought it would just be another route job and they'd all merrily roll along once it was done too. While Dean's not sympathetic, he's maybe supposed to be seen as so much of a loser that his fate is underserved and it's not really until he becomes a vampire himself and goes after Joey that Frank's somebody you think should really f*** off—even though you already thought he had a bad attitude throughout the movie as it was.

I'll gather some more thoughts for later. That's what I got right now. The point was again to think about how they all put themselves in this position and yet want for most of them to make it out of this too.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Apr 21st 2024 at 8:49:19 AM

Ehh, that was their reputation but the fact was that John Carpenter and other producers weren't making any of that statement beyond, "the people distracted having sex and high are easy pickings."

Certainly the targeted audience was made of people who didn't see a problem with it.

I'd like to believe that morality in horror films has gotten a bit more complex since Death By Sex was a thing.

As brilliant as I think the concept of the movie is, the reveal she's a vampire isn't until about halfway through and I do feel that that is a problem—and that either the trailer shouldn't have revealed it or it should've been unveiled sooner. The movie does a very good job building up to that though. You kind of get why they made it a deleting point even though it's a little deceptive.

As I said above, I'm glad I didn't watch the trailer for this one, because it literally spoils the monster reveal.

I mean the movie is called Abigail though. Her being the cause of the trouble is a big underlying purpose. Again, I knew as far back as when it was announced Radio Silence was doing a movie with both Melissa Barrera and Kathryn Newton that it was gonna involve a vampire or even Dracula as is.

In turn, the first I heard about it was when my son asked to go to the drive-in this weekend. I feel like I enjoyed it more going in completely blind.

If they hadn't revealed she was a vampire in the trailer there'd be people saying "it started off really interesting but THEN IT TURNED INTO A VAMPIRE MOVIE blah blah people don't like twists anymore."

Kind of a damned if you do/don't situation.

I'd give this movie a C+.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 21st 2024 at 8:54:41 AM

It explained a lot to see Radio Silence say that no two drafts of this movie's script had the same actual, final antagonist.

I didn't see any blood. I did see a lot of red food coloring. Honestly, the bloodsplosions were the dumbest effects in the film, but this sort of thing isn't my jam, so I can't speak for people who enjoy it.

I will admit it started having diminishing returns once the bloodsplosions started. There was a movie called Ready or Not starring Samara Weaving that did the same thing, and another movie called uh... forget what it was called but it was about teenagers who spontaneously started exploding in class one day and it was a big metaphor about adolescence. Anyway the bloodsplosion loses stopping power after the first one.

Plus James A Janisse (Dead Meat) is probably going to review the movie and analyze what actually happened in the practical vs computer effects department.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 22nd 2024 at 8:43:33 AM

It's possible there were CG effects in some areas, but most of it looked practical. I admit my eye isn't as practiced as many on that. Definitely a lot of wire and mannequin work, especially in the fight sequences.

Also, the ending really felt like it could have been anyone in that "reveal". I'm not sure how I was supposed to react.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 22nd 2024 at 9:25:20 AM

Ready or Not is literally by the director of Abigail! Which did make me interested in the older one, not a big horror fan but was very invested while watching Abigail between the good cast and many effective scares (it's underwhelming the movie's Nightmare Fuel page is literally one line long!).

"many effective scares"

In what alternate universe? I was startled by one jump scare in the first act. I think it was the rat.

Also, tropes articles on horror movies should be very conservative with the Nightmare Fuel since they're (allegedly) intending to be scary.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 24th 2024 at 4:31:02 AM

So, is this movie good or So Bad, It's Good?

Edited by Bubblepig on Apr 23rd 2024 at 6:57:18 AM

It's worth watching, if not necessarily a full-priced ticket. Don't go in expecting it to make a political statement or do your taxes for you, but if you watch movies to be entertained then its pretty entertaining.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 23rd 2024 at 10:17:18 AM

I'm here for entertainment, not to make a political statement or do my taxes for me. I don't know where you got the idea from.

Edited by Bubblepig on Apr 23rd 2024 at 7:22:59 AM

It's just that some people seem to only like things that carry a message, fly a flag, etc. (had bad experiences with this, such as seeing people complain that their issues with Mockingjay and Wonder Woman regarded "betraying feminist ideas")

And regarding the scares, the pool full of corpses was one.

Okay, I'll grant you that the pool scene was pretty shocking. It became less so when it merely acted as an excuse for that character to be Covered in Gunge.