Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 13 (Abigail)

In this scene Melissa Barrera shows the 
importance of masking.

Before we get going here, a little bit of a tangent on why I'm doing this film and the next one. Last year, as you may recall, there was a strike and so for the Halloween marathon that meant not talking about any struck studio films as a stand of solidarity. Included among this was 2023's Scream VI, and so true to my word I did not talk about it. I did, however, watch it eventually. I do not remember it all that well. Scream V was a master class of a self-aware slasher, updating itself both for another generation of horror movie evolution it could reflect as well as making its killers the ultimate escalation of toxic fandom: committing murders so that Hollywood would adapt them into a trope-laden slasher movie that would get back to basics and not do any innovative shit like that Rian Johnson guy done. Scream VI was too soon to have anything to say about the state of horror or fandom or anything interesting like that. It has some half-hearted messaging but its most meta moment has the movie shrug and go "It's a sequel to a legacy reboot which means anything can happen!". The anything, in this case, was a bunch of callbacks to the Scream franchise and also pissed-off family members of one of the killers from the last movie deciding they were justified in pretending to be friends with the protagonists before killing all their friends and then laughing about how they're the good guys in the climax. 

Why are we talking about Scream? Because of what happened next. Namely Melissa Barrera getting shitcanned from Scream for (gasp) saying that maybe all the Palestinians shouldn't be fucking killed! Her costar Jenna Ortega followed suit, and that left the new Scream series without its leading ladies... at which point they have just called Neve Campbell back as a desperate pandering plea to the Scream fans out there. WE'RE SO SORRY THEY SAID THE MEAN THING, THEY'RE FIRED NOW, BUT LOOK WE GOT YOUR OLD FAVORITE FINAL GIRL BACK PLEASE GIVE US MONEY! It is as cowardly and craven a business decision and appeasement to "the fans" as The Rise Of Skywalker, and the people behind it should fucking know better considering they made assholes like that the fucking killers two movies ago. As a result, here's my line in the sand. No more Scream on the spooky marathons. I really dig some of the older ones, and Scream V did light my world on fire with how much it seemed to get that toxic fandom can and would escalate into literal death for the sake of a fucking motion picture. Life does not imitate art, and they have sided with that fandom. Let them have Scream VII. They're toxic fandom, they'll probably hate it because a black woman dared to appear on screen or something.

Which leads us to my own bit of defiance. Scream wants to shit the bed and not support its dynamic duo? Then I will. Today we look at a film starring Melissa Barrera, and next time we'll be watching one with Jenna Ortega in it. With all that being said... Abigail. Holy fucking shit, y'all, this movie kind of fucking ruled. It is a bit of a slow burn, but that slow burn quickly catches fire and becomes a blazing inferno in the back half. If you don't know the premise of Abigail, just go into it blind. I already knew what it involved and so I wasn't surprised by that particular reveal, but neither did this ruin the movie for me. Melissa Barrera is part of this motley crew of criminals who abduct a little ballerina girl to hold her ransom for her rich father, hiding out in a creepy mansion to do so. Things escalate when people start fucking dying. I'm just going to say it, and I hope you're not a speed reader or a skimmer but I have to give it away. The ballerina girl, the titular Abigail, is a fucking vampire and this entire kidnapping thing was a ruse to get her locked in a creepy mansion with a bunch of fresh meat for her to hunt down and drink well from.

I absolutely love the vibes of this mansion. It's much more Resident Evil than Hill House, but there's just something about the space of it that appeals in the movie. It's awash in these dark golds at first, but then there are more muted colors as you get deeper into its innards and find the horrible truth within, much like the movie. Props also have to be given to Abigail. In the first place, the idea of a ballerina vampire is inspired. A repeated motif in the movie is the theme to Swan Lake, famously used as the opening credits in the Bela Lugosi Dracula (and this is also a Universal motion picture, how fitting!) and a great bit of foreshadowing. It fits because Abigail is a ballerina, but being a ballerina gives her this sense of poise and grace that only add to the terror of a tiny fucking vampire hunting you down to rip out your throat. The actress also nails that very particular vibe of a vampire girl who looks young but is actually centuries old and speaking with a wisdom and malice you wouldn't expect from a little girl. You know, like Kirsten Dunst in Interview With The Vampire. 

While we're gushing, let's gush about the gushing. The particular decision to make vampires fucking explode into a burst of blood and gore when you do one of their weaknesses like staking or sunlight on them is satisfying on that base level of seeing the red stuff in a horror movie. By the end of the picture Melissa Barrera is just coated in that red shit, and there's a particular power in making your leading lady a blood-soaked survivor at movie's end. I also appreciate that there's an underlying theme here about absent parents and their responsibility to their children. Barrera's character Joey is a recovering drug addict who had to give up her son in order to focus on getting herself clean, and has yet to reconnect. Abigail has concocted this scheme of killing those who have wronged her powerful vampire father as a way of trying to get back into Daddy's good graces. Joey and Abigail have this understanding between each other, even as first Abigail is Joey's hostage and then the vampire trying to fucking kill her. Barrera once again gets to confront the dark undead heart of toxic masculinity with the true final boss of the movie, and some form of empathy and kindness is possible even at movie's end. I don't know what else to say, other than this movie absolutely fucking rules and should be watched. Even if the fact that you're reading this meant I told you a lot of what's going on under the hood. It still rules, and Melissa Barrera rules in it. May she be in much more great horror, or hell great movies in general, to come.