Abigail2024

The Review

Here is the first thing you need to know about Abigail, and it is the thing that decides whether you will love it or merely like it: the film is at its best when it is a joke, and at its weakest when it stops joking.

The setup is a beauty. Six criminals — a crew of strangers who know each other only by aliases — kidnap a little girl after her dance recital and take her to Wilhelm Manor, a secluded pile in the middle of nowhere, to guard her for twenty-four hours until a fifty-million-dollar ransom is paid. The fixer who hired them, Lambert, played by Giancarlo Esposito with the silkiest menace he can muster, leaves them there and drives away. The aliases are Rat Pack names — Joey, Frank, Sammy, Peter, Dean — with one odd man out: Rickles, named not for a Rat Packer but for comedian Don Rickles, which tells you everything about the film’s sense of humour before anyone has bled a drop.

Then the doors lock. Dean is decapitated. Rickles is found torn apart. And the survivors, who have spent the first half-hour sniping at each other like the crew of a heist film that has gone wrong, start to realise that the legendary enforcer they fear — a name whispered in the underworld, Valdez — is not coming for them. Valdez is already in the house. Valdez is the little girl in the tutu.

That is the film’s engine, and for an hour it purrs. Radio Silence — Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the duo behind Ready or Not and the two most recent Scream films — know exactly what they are doing here. The film is a horror comedy in the truest sense: the comedy and the horror are the same machine, not two machines bolted together. The jokes land because the characters are the kind of people who joke when they are frightened, and the gore lands because the film has already made you like the people it is about to tear apart. The garlic does not work. The stakes do not work. The crosses do not work. Frank shoots the little girl in the head and she heals instantly and smiles at him, and the film holds on that smile just long enough for you to understand that everything you thought you knew about vampire movies is about to be very funny and very fatal, in that order.

And then there is Alisha Weir. She was thirteen when filming began and fourteen by the time the film reached cinemas, playing a character presented as twelve years old and centuries old in truth — and she is the whole film. She learned ballet for the role, and the ballet is not a gimmick: Swan Lake opens the film, and ballet movement runs through her kills, pirouettes turning into neck-snaps, arabesques turning into lunges. Weir plays Abigail as a child who has had centuries to perfect the performance of innocence, and the performance is the horror — the politeness, the patience, the way she lets the adults explain their plan to her as if she has not heard a hundred versions of it before. When the mask slips, what comes out is not a tantrum but a predator, and Weir makes the switch without ever breaking the character’s skin. It is a star-making turn, and the film knows it: every time the camera drifts away from her, it hurries back.

The ensemble around her is the other reason the film works as well as it does. Melissa Barrera is Joey, a former Army medic and recovering addict tasked with looking after Abigail, and she is the film’s emotional centre — the only member of the crew with something to lose that is not money, a son waiting for her at home, and the only one Abigail ever comes to trust. Dan Stevens is Frank, a corrupt former NYPD detective and the crew’s de facto leader, and he plays him with the smug, brittle confidence of a man who has always been the smartest person in the room and is about to discover he is not. Kathryn Newton is Sammy, the thrill-seeking hacker; Kevin Durand is Peter, the physically imposing mob enforcer; Will Catlett is Rickles, the former Marine sniper; Angus Cloud is Dean, the getaway driver, in a posthumous role — he finished his scenes before his death in July 2023, and the film is dedicated to his memory. Every one of them gets a moment to be funny, and every one of them gets a moment to be frightened, and the film is generous enough to give them both.

That is also where the film’s problems live, and they are real. The first is the one the film cannot fix: the trailers gave the twist away. The marketing revealed that Abigail is a vampire, and multiple reviewers noted it at the time — so the film’s big reveal, the moment the crew discovers what is locked in with them, lands for the audience as a confirmation rather than a shock. The film is built to survive that — it is a comedy of bad decisions as much as a horror film, and it works even when you know the secret — but the first act plays noticeably better if you can somehow forget what you already know, and you cannot.

The second problem is the third act. Once the trap is sprung and the bodies start falling, the film is a riot. But the final stretch — Lambert’s return, Frank’s turn, the long fight in the manor’s depths — runs long, and the film’s energy dips exactly where it should spike. Dan Stevens is game, and the film gives him a full villain turn, but the mechanics of who can turn whom, and why Frank’s bite on Joey does not take the way a vampire bite should, are never stated cleanly — the film does not have a coherent rule for its own vampirism, and it shows in the climax, where the stakes feel improvised rather than inevitable. The ending itself is the right one — Joey survives, Abigail lets her go, and the film resists the temptation to turn Joey into a vampire or to promise a sequel — but getting there takes longer than the film can afford, and the last twenty minutes feel like a film that has already told its best joke twice.

The third problem is the box office, which is the saddest footnote of all, because the film deserved better than it got. It opened to about $10.3 million domestic — number two behind Civil War, below the $12–15 million the trade had projected — and finished at about $43 million worldwide (Box Office Mojo: $42.8 million; The Numbers: $43.0 million) against a reported $28 million production budget. Contemporary coverage called the theatrical run disappointing, and by most metrics it was not enough to turn a profit on theatrical gross alone. Then the film went to Peacock, where it became a streaming hit — number one on the service on release there in July 2024, and still drawing viewers more than a year later. Both facts are true, in sequence: the cinemas did not reward it, and the living rooms did. The film’s reputation has grown ever since, and it now sits on multiple best-horror lists — but the theatrical result is the reason there is no sequel in development, and the directors have said they did not go in with a sequel design, though they would return “in a heartbeat.”

The New York Times was cooler, and used its review to argue for watching the 1936 Dracula’s Daughter instead — which is fair, in its way, because the 1936 film is the one this film started from, and the comparison flatters them both.

Because that is the part worth getting right. Abigail began as a modern-day reimagining of Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936), itself the sequel to Dracula (1931) — and then it departed from that film almost entirely in plot. The 1936 picture, directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Gloria Holden as Countess Marya Zaleska, is about an adult woman trying to escape vampirism; the 2024 film is about a centuries-old child vampire who lures and hunts her kidnappers. By the time production began in Dublin in spring 2023, there was, in one contemporary account, “no connection to the 1936 Universal picture” beyond the starting point. So don’t call it a remake. It is a loose reimagining that took the title’s shadow and built something else entirely underneath it — and the film is better for the distance.

That distance is also the film’s philosophy. Universal’s stated approach at the time was filmmaker-driven, standalone monster films — not a shared interconnected universe, the post-The Mummy (2017) course correction, in the same mould as The Invisible Man (2020) and Renfield (2023). There is no post-credits scene. There is no shared universe. There is a portrait in the mansion of a distant ancestor of Ready or Not‘s Tony Le Domas — a Radio Silence Easter egg, not confirmed shared-universe canon — and that is as close as the film comes to winking at its own family tree. The directors even said they wanted to avoid mentioning Dracula at all, to set the film apart from other vampire movies; at one point they considered a line in which Abigail’s father reveals he killed Dracula, and it did not make the final film. Dracula is never named on screen. The reading that Abigail’s father, Kristof Lazaar, is the Count himself — a man with many names over many centuries — is an implication, not dialogue, and the film is careful to leave it that way.

That restraint is the film’s best instinct, and it is the reason the ending works. When Lazaar finally arrives, he threatens Joey as a loose end — and Abigail, who has spent the whole film killing for her father’s love, defends the woman who was there for her when her father was not. Lazaar relents, for Abigail’s sake, and lets the bloodied Joey leave. It is a small, human moment at the end of a film soaked in blood, and it is the one moment in the picture that is not a joke and not a kill. It is a daughter choosing someone else over her father, and a father, for once, letting her.

Spoiler Section

Everything below gives away the whole film. If you have not seen it, stop here — come back after.

Six criminals kidnap Abigail, a young ballerina, after her Swan Lake recital and take her to the secluded Wilhelm Manor. Their fixer, Lambert, tells them to guard her for twenty-four hours until a fifty-million-dollar ransom is paid. The crew use aliases, not real names: Joey, Frank, Sammy, Peter, Rickles and Dean.

The crew are locked in by the manor’s security system. Dean is decapitated; Rickles is found torn apart. The survivors first suspect Lazaar’s legendary enforcer “Valdez” is in the house — then Abigail transforms, and they understand: she is the vampire, and Valdez is her. Frank shoots her in the head; she heals instantly. Garlic, stakes and crosses all fail. Joey manages to tranquilize and cage her — but not before Abigail bites Sammy.

There is no straightforward ransom. Abigail, centuries old, admits Lambert works for her father: the “kidnapping” is a trap to dispose of Lazaar’s enemies, chosen because they have all crossed him. Abigail kills for her father in hopes of winning his love. Sammy turns, kills Peter by drinking his blood, then is killed by Frank and Joey — sunlight destroys her.

Lambert lures Joey and Frank into a hidden control room. He reveals Abigail turned him into a vampire two years earlier as punishment for helping Frank, and that he has been luring Lazaar’s enemies to the manor for Abigail ever since. He offers Frank vampirism and a coup against Abigail and Lazaar. Frank accepts — then immediately double-crosses and stakes Lambert. Frank drinks Abigail’s blood, overpowers her, and turns on Joey: he bites her, tries to make her kill Abigail, and vows to turn her and have her kill her own son.

Abigail teams up with Joey; together they stake Frank, and he is destroyed, freeing Joey from the curse — his bite never fully took, and his death undoes it. Abigail lets Joey leave and urges her to return to her son. Then Kristof Lazaar arrives, threatens Joey as a loose end, and Abigail defends her: Joey was there for her when her father was not. Lazaar relents for Abigail’s sake and lets the bloodied Joey leave. Joey drives away from the manor. Before the fight she leaves a voicemail for her son; the film deliberately does not show him answering, and does not confirm she is reunited with him.

The vampire rules, as shown in the film rather than as a coherent folklore system: sunlight destroys vampires, stakes to the heart kill, but garlic and crosses fail, and only draining a vampire of blood is stated as a sure kill.

Trivia

• It started as Dracula’s Daughter and walked away from it. The project was at one point titled Dracula’s Daughter, and the working title during filming was Abducting Abigail. By production, it had departed from the 1936 film almost entirely in plot.
• The manor is a real Guinness house. The film was shot in Dublin, standing in for an unnamed American setting. The main location is Glenmaroon House — the Guinness Manor at Castleknock, on the edge of Dublin’s Phoenix Park — built in 1905 for Arthur Ernest Guinness. The opening dance performance was filmed at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin. Filming was interrupted by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.
• Weir learned ballet for the role. The ballet training is widely reported, and ballet movement runs through Abigail’s kills — the “ballerina vampire” image is the film’s signature, not a one-scene gag.
• The twist was not a secret. The trailers revealed that Abigail is a vampire, a point multiple reviewers noted — and trade coverage has blamed the marketing for spoiling the twist, though that is commentary, not a proven cause of the soft box office.
• Angus Cloud finished his scenes before he died. Cloud completed his work as Dean before his death on July 31, 2023. The film was released after his death and dedicated in his memory — this is not an unfinished or CGI role.
• There is a Ready or Not Easter egg in the manor. A portrait in the mansion is of a distant ancestor of Ready or Not‘s Tony Le Domas. It is a Radio Silence in-joke, not confirmed shared-universe canon.
• The closing-credits song is an original. Jean Dawson’s “Burn My Tongue” plays over the closing credits, over Brian Tyler’s score.
• It flopped in cinemas and became a streaming hit. The film opened below projections and finished at about $43 million worldwide on a $28 million production budget — not enough to turn a profit theatrically by most metrics — then went to number one on Peacock when it arrived there in July 2024.
• The only win on its awards list is a craft win. The film’s sole win among its nominations is the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Production Design, for Susie Cullen. The rest — five Fangoria Chainsaw nominations, two Saturn nominations, a Critics’ Choice Best Young Performer nomination for Weir — are nominations, not wins.
• No sequel is in development. The directors said they did not go in with a sequel design, though they would return “in a heartbeat.” Trade coverage says a sequel does not appear to be on the cards — and Weir, playing a character who cannot age, is ageing.
• Dracula is never named, and the “killed Dracula” line was cut. The directors considered a line in which Abigail’s father reveals he killed Dracula. It did not make the final film.

Where to Watch

Checked November 9, 2026. Streaming rights shift — check your service before you settle in.

• Rent or buy: Amazon Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home; rent only: Spectrum On Demand

No subscription streaming is listed: no subscription streamer is currently confirmed as carrying it in the US right now, so nothing is printed rather than something guessed.

The Verdict

Abigail is the most fun Radio Silence have had since Ready or Not — a bloody, funny, superbly cast horror comedy with a killer premise and a star-making turn from Alisha Weir, who dances through the whole film like the monster she is. The third act runs long, the vampire rules never quite cohere, and the trailers gave away the twist before you sat down. But the first hour is a riot, the ensemble is game for all of it, and the ending — a daughter choosing someone else over her father, and a father, for once, letting her — earns the blood it took to get there. It deserved a better theatrical run than it got. Find it on your couch, turn the lights down, and let the little girl dance.

3.5 ravens out of 5.