Credit: Elyssa Grillo

WSPN reporters Elyssa Grillo and Jessi Dretler debrief the pros, cons and demons of the newest horror film: “Abigail.”

Released on April 19, “Abigail” quickly piqued the interest of horror movie fans. After watching the trailer and seeing the annihilating dance battles, we knew we needed to see this movie. Although parts of the movie were slightly strange, the entertainment factor definitely lived up to our expectations.

The movie begins with a group of felons kidnapping a young ballerina. Hoping to exploit her father’s wealth, they scheme to hold the girl for a ransom of seven million dollars. Their plan of action quickly changes when they discover that the little girl is more dangerous than they think she is. The group stumbles on the bone chilling discovery that Abigail is not just an innocent little girl, she is a satanic creature. Abigail uses a mixture of ballet and other forms of dance to attack members of the group. The trip goes from an exciting and easy way to gain money, to an unearthly expedition.

“Abigail” portrays a contrasting combination of a little ballerina dressed in a White Swan tutu to a flesh-eating monster. This theme of purity hiding malice is quite common in the horror movie genre. For example, Damien in “The Omen” or Nina Sayers in “Black Swan.” While the major idea has been done before, we have never seen it with the same ‘thrasher’ energy and continuous plot-twists that “Abigail” has.

One piece of this film we found impressive was the actress who played Abigail, Alisha Weir. Weir debuted in 2022’s “Matilda: The Musical” and as a 14-year-old, her acting skills are very superb. Playing the villain in a horror movie is difficult, however Weir exhibited the malicious of her character with amazing control. The rest of the actors were good, but we noticed that Abigail really stuck out because she represented the secret, ruthless, blood-thirsty little girl perfectly.

The film had us on the edge of our seats the entire time as we guessed the different possible endings. We couldn’t determine whether the movie would conclude with a happy ending or not because of all the battles, deaths, twists and turns throughout the plot. The ominousness is less eerie and more exciting, so it’s a great horror film to watch with friends due to the mild gore and over-the-top dramatics.

Although some scenes are scary, we felt that the movie was more of a joke. Most of the scenes that were supposed to be frightening really just made us laugh. The CGI was substandard and in our opinion, all of the jumpscare clips of possession and murders looked extremely fake. While these effects looked fake, they still appeared very graphic and disgusting, which disturbed us. However, even though it wasn’t very scary, we still enjoyed the movie and thought it was a fun watch.

Overall, we would rate this movie a 7.5/10. We really enjoyed it even though we didn’t find it very scary. The movie was very entertaining and fun to watch with friends. We would recommend this movie to anyone who likes scary movies but doesn’t like to get too frightened. Although the scare tactics were slightly subpar, it was definitely a very enjoyable movie to watch.