Richard Crouse

Lots of kids like to play with their food, but the main character in “Abigail,” a new vampire film now playing in theatres, takes it to a new level.

The story begins with a plan to kidnap Abigail (Alisha Weir), the twelve-year-old ballerina daughter of a well-known underworld boss. Ringleader Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) makes it sound simple. He directs his ragtag team, including ex-cop Frank (Dan Stevens), hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton), medic Joey (Melissa Barrera), musclebound enforcer Peter (Kevin Durand), ex-Marine Rickles (William Catlett) and get-away driver Dean (Angus Cloud in his last completed role), to contain Abigail and babysit her for twenty-four hours until a sizable ransom is paid.

How hard can that be?

With little effort, they pick up the unassuming looking rich girl, and secret her away to a secluded mansion where she is blindfolded and tied to a bed for safe keeping.

Things take a twist, however, when it’s revealed that Abigail is a bloodsucking fiend, quick to kill and drop a witty one-liner.

“I’m sorry about what’s gonna happen to you,” she tells one of her soon-to-be victims.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, collectively known as Radio Silence, blow the plasma budget, filling the screen with gallons of bloody goo and arterial discharge. In its last half it is a splatter fest that provides the satisfying guts and gore horror fan expect.

But, in its own limited way, it’s also a family drama, a story of lost, lonely people, looking for approval from loved ones. That element gives the movie a nice grace note, but the focus here is popcorn thrills and chills.

As in “Ready or Not,” a Radio Silence movie from 2019, “Abigail” is largely set in a grand old gothic mansion. Trapped like rats in a labyrinth, the kidnappers flail helplessly, looking for, and finding, danger around every darkened corner.

Against that setting, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett stage several memorable scenes. In one, a newly-turned vampire acts as a puppet, performing an undead dance under Abigail’s telepathic control. It’s bizarre, kinda cool and diabolically funny.

The film’s beating heart, or rather, unbeating heart, is Weir, a kinetic presence who blends ballet with bloody vampiric attacks. Her shift from helpless child to two-hundred-year-old bloodsucker is the film’s coup de grâce.

“Abigail” goes on a little too long, puts a bit too much space between the gory set pieces and gives some characters the short shrift, but ultimately delivers a gory good time for genre fans.