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.
Ghostface is back, kicking and screaming—and stabbing, punching and shot-gunning—in another bloody adventure where real life imitates the reel life of slasher movies. Like the other entries in the franchise “Scream VI,” now playing in theatres, sets out to deconstruct slasher movies, but actually delivers the gory slasher goods.
Set following the events of the 2022’s “Scream,” the new film moves the action out of Woodsboro, California, site of the previous Ghostface killings, to New York City at Halloween. The “core four,” the survivors of Ghostface’s latest rampage—sisters Samantha and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) and twins Chad and Mindy Meeks (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown)—hightailed it across country to attend school and put the past behind them, but trauma has a way of following a person.
Sam, who killed her boyfriend Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid) when she discovered he was a Ghostface killer, in love with her simply because she is the daughter of the original killer in the screaming mask, is now seeking treatment, but admits, stabbing him 22 times, slitting his throat, and shooting him in the head, “felt right.”
No spoilers here, but suffice to say, the movie follows the “rules” laid out by film student Mindy: Rule one: As the franchise ages, the movies will get bigger. Rule two: Expect the opposite of last time. Rule three: Legacy characters and main characters are cannon fodder. No one is safe.
“Scream VI” feels fresher than you would expect from an almost thirty-year-old movie franchise. A rotating cast of new and old faces helps with that, providing new stories wrapped in nostalgia, but it also has something to do with the franchise’s desire to entertain at almost any cost.
This one is a tightly knit, if familiar-ish, story, amped up with gorier-than-usual killings—I’m sure I saw intestines!—and what Alfred Hitchcock would have called a “refrigerator climax.” That means it seems to make sense while you are watching it, but later, when you’re standing in front of the fridge looking for something to eat, and your mind drifts back to the film, you realize just how preposterous it was. The Grand-Guignol ending is over the top, but hey, remember rule number one?
“Scream VI” doesn’t exactly slash a new path for the franchise, but the expected mix of humor, gore and self-reverence and its willingness to be silly and kinda tense at the same earns it a recommend.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Jennifer Burke to have a look at new movies coming to VOD and streaming services, including Johnny Knoxville and the unnatural acts of “Jackass Forever,” the reboot of “Scream,” the unhappily ever after fairy tale “The King’s Daughter” AND the great punk rock doc “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché.”
It’s been more than a quarter of a century since the original “Scream,” starring David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore, reinvented the slasher genre with a scary, funny and self-reverential take on things that go stab in the night.
Three sequels later, there’s a new edition, the inventively titled “Scream.” It’s the fifth film in the series, and they’re not calling it a sequel. It is, God help us, a relaunch, or, as they call it in the movie, a “requel.”
A mix of new and old characters, “Scream” takes place in Woodsboro, California, a sleepy little town whose peace and quiet was interrupted twenty-five years ago by a killer in the now iconic Ghostface mask.
The action in the new film gets underway as a new Ghostface killer sets their sights, and knife, on Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), a teenage senior at Woodsboro High who enjoys “elevated horror.” (MILD SPOILER) Unlike the opening scene characters before her, Tara survives and is tended to by older sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) whose thorny history with Ghostface makes the pair a target for the masked killer.
As Ghostface’s killing spree continues, Sam turns to the old guard, Dewey Riley (David Arquette), television morning show host Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), for help.
“Scream” is much cleverer than the retread title and recycled killer would suggest. It continues the meta commentary on the rules characters in slasher movies must abide by if they expect to survive the knife but, more than that, it plays like a satire of itself. It’s a trickly line to walk but directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett stay the course.
As the killer carves notches on his belt, characters talk about “elevated horror,” and toxic fandom until the line between what the characters are talking about and what we’re watching on screen blurs into one bloody riff on postmodern horror and what it really means to be a “requel.” It is simultaneously self-reverential and mocking of the slasher genre, and values its cleverness as much as the kills that provide the scares.
The scary scenes don’t have quite the same atmosphere Wes Craven brought to his “Scream” instalments, but there are moments that linger in the memory. The old trope of revealing the killer behind an opening door is played for laughs and tension, and the loss of one of the “legacy” characters is actually kind of touching.
As expected, the killings are brutal and bloody, and mostly not played for laughs. The new “Scream” is the most gruesome film in the franchise, offering up piercing knives and gallons of pouring plasma. There are plot holes everywhere and the victims have usually done something to out themselves in harm’s way, but the killings are effectively played out.
“Scream” is a slasher movie that bends the rules of slasher movies but, best of all, it also breaks the sequel rule of diminishing returns. Adding a fifth entry to an established franchise, that holds up to the original, may be the movie’s biggest achievement.
“Ready or Not” puts a darkly humorous spin on a childhood game but it isn’t the first horror film to use hide n’ seek as a plot device. The inventively titled short film “Hide & Shriek” sees a masked killer ruining the fun while “Emelie” features an evil babysitter who keeps the kids busy with a dangerous version of the game. The new film is a bloody satire with sly commentary about the lengths the 1% will do to keep their cash.
Upon marrying Alex (Mark O’Brien) Grace (Samara Weaving) becomes the newest member of the wealthy but weird Le Domas family. “You don’t belong in this family,” says drunk brother-in-law Daniel (Adam Brody). “I mean that as a complement.”
Her new in-laws, including disdainful father-in-law Tony (Henry Czerny), angry mother-in-law Becky (Andie MacDowell), coke-head sister-in-law sister Emilie (Melanie Scrofano) and her husband Fitch Bradley (Kristian Bruun), all heirs to a board game fortune, tell her the marriage won’t be complete until she partakes in a family ritual, a randomly selected midnight game. “It’s just something we do when someone new joins the family,” explains Alex.
The last time this tradition was carried out it took the form of a game of Old Maid. Unfortunately for Grace this time around the family chooses hide n’ seek. “You pulled up a bad card,” says Alex. “The truth is If they don’t kill you something very bad will happen.”
What begins as a lark turns lethal when Grace realizes that to ‘win’ she must first learn to navigate the Le Domas’s rambling old mansion, complete with trap doors and secret passageways. “When you marry into this family you have to play the game or you die. I know it sounds crazy but it’s true.”
“Ready or Not” is a well-executed lo-fi thriller with an unusual premise and lots of creepy characters straight out of a game of “Clue.” For the most part Weaving plays it straight, even as she uses her wedding dress as a tourniquet, while the Le Domas family amps up the antics with broad performances driven by the belief that something terrible will happen if they don’t find Grace by first light. They’re a motley bunch, pseudo-aristocrats with an interest in the occult who don’t appear to have much in common except for the bond of family and a desire to stay alive. As old-money members of the 1% they believe they are above the law, able to indulge in their game (even if they’re not very good at it) because of some old family legend. In other words, as Daniel says, “It’s true what they say. The rich really are different.”
The surprisingly nasty third act gives “Ready or Not” the feel of a future cult classic, a crowd-pleaser with some laughs and a giddily gory climax.
“Devil’s Due,” a new horror film that gives “Rosemary’s Baby” an unwanted found footage update wasn’t screened for the press. Living up to his motto–“I see bad movies so you don’t have to.”–Richard saw it on Saturday afternoon. Here’s his twitter review (click on the pictures to enlarge).
From IMDB: After a mysterious, lost night on their honeymoon, a newlywed couple finds themselves dealing with an earlier-than-planned pregnancy. While recording everything for posterity, the husband begins to notice odd behavior in his wife that they initially write off to nerves, but, as the months pass, it becomes evident that the dark changes to her body and mind have a much more sinister origin.
