Abigail (2024)

 

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's sardonic horror kick Abigail is a real bait and switch.

It's not that audiences don't know the movie about a darling ballerina with a secret (Alisha Weir) is a scare fest wrapped in a kidnapping plot. Bait and switch is actually the core of the springy story where we find six shady characters contracted by a mysterious envoy (the always welcome Giancarlo Esposito) to abduct the daughter of a tycoon and watch her in an abandoned mansion until the father (Matthew Goode) could pay the $50 million ransom.

The best thing about the picture is the whacked-out crew of delectable stereotypes (Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, William Catlett, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand and a stand-out Angus Cloud, who tragically died last year of a drug overdose).

As might be expected in such a picture, these half-dozen souls will be fodder for whatever awaits them overnight. The creature is revealed fairly early so much of this bloodily explosive adventure is watching the crew members get picked off and survivors try, with varying degrees of success, to outwit the smartest one in the house.

Much of the film, written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, is howlingly funny, with a few tender moments, but mostly an open tap of raspberry jam and fake viscera.