‘Abigail’ extracts clever horror from a plot to kidnap the wrong little girl

KEYT— Review by Brian Lowry, CNN (CNN) — A dual attempt to breathe life into the vampire and haunted-house genres, “Abigail” could have been called “Don’t Tell Mom the Kid I’m Babysitting’s Dead.” The simple premise, however, turns into an effective little horror movie, a bit strained toward the end, but until then a clever and

The Guardian—Abigail review – Dan Stevens throws himself into gleefully gory kidnap horror. A​fter forming a one-off criminal gang, Stevens and co come to regret kidnapping a gangster’s daughter ​– played by Matilda star Alisha WeirFew actors appear to derive such lip-smacking relish from the job as former Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens. The bigger the performance, the greater the gusto with which he sinks his teeth into the role. And if a bit of scenery gets chewed along the way, well, that’s just collateral damage. As sneering and sadistic criminal Frank, Stevens is one of several...

The Guardian—Abigail review – Dracula’s daughter gets kidnapped in fun-sucking horror. There’s some low-stakes pleasure to be had in the first half of the gory new film from the team behind Ready or Not and Scream but things fall apart disastrouslyLast year’s handsome gothic horror The Last Voyage of the Demeter and bombastic Nic Cage comedy Renfield allowed Universal the opportunity to present known IP as something fresh, at least on the surface, stories involving Dracula but told in ways we hadn’t seen before. They represented a nifty marketing strategy for a back catalogue of...

Collider—Before ‘Abigail,’ Dan Stevens Had a Showdown in This Netflix Horror Movie. Before he was fighting vampires in Abigail, Dan Stevens went against a sinister cult in Netflix's horror movie, Apostle.