From previous films by Radio Silence to similarly blood-soaked vampire comedies likeThe Lost Boys, there are plenty of great horror movies likeAbigailfor fans to check out. Helmed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, known collectively as Radio Silence,Abigailputs a fresh comedic spin on the vampire mythology. It revolves around an elite group of crooks being sent to abduct the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful figure in the criminal underworld, only to find that she’s actually a bloodthirsty, centuries-old vampire. She’s not trapped in a mansion with them; they’re trapped in a mansion with her.
Before turning their sights to the vampire genre,Radio Silence had put their own uniquely energetic and darkly comic stamp on horror cinemawithReady or Notand theirScreamfilms.Abigailisn’t the first movie to wring pitch-black humor out of vampires having fun; this was previously seen inFrom Dusk Till Dawn. From other killer kid movies likeThe OmenandChildren of the Cornto the 1930s Universal Monsters classic that it reimagines, there are a ton of great horror movies that fans ofAbigailneed to watch.
Renfield
Cast
In this horror comedy, Renfield, the lackey of Count Dracula, aids the famous vampire on his journey to the new world. Unfortunately, the long-suffering servant is committed to an insane asylum after being framed for the murder of several ship crew members on arrival. When given a second chance at life, he falls for a quirky and aggressive traffic cop named Rebecca Quincy.
Despite there beingso many Dracula moviesthat exist, the character continues to be of interest in Hollywood, with several recent movies bringing the iconic character back to the screen. While Dracula’s role inAbigailis a fun surprise, he gets a much more prominent role, albeit a supporting one, inRenfield. Nicholas Hoult stars as Renfield, Dracula’s loyal familiar for centuries. However, as his master awakens in the modern world, Renfield begins to question his life of servitude.
As fun as Matthew Goode is in his cameo inAbigail, Nicolas Cage delivers a hugely entertaining performance as Dracula, being hilarious as well as frightening.
LikeAbigail,Renfieldtakes a more comedic approach to the vampire genrewith an even more lighthearted energy, yet in a movie that is still filled with blood and gore. As fun as Matthew Goode is in his cameo inAbigail, Nicolas Cage delivers a hugely entertaining performance as Dracula, being hilarious as well as frightening. He is the highlight of this good, wild, and fun ride.
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Bodies Bodies Bodies is a comedy/horror/thriller from 2 AM. When Bee (Maria Bakalova) travels to a hurricane party with her girlfriend Sophie (Amanda Stenberg), they find themselves surrounded by affluent 20-somethings with very different world views. When the party finally kicks off amidst the coming storm, the debauchery leads to a game of “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” However, when a power outage occurs during the game, and a murder occurs in its stead, the party takes a turn for the deadly.
Abigailis able to be a big and violent horror movie while still keeping its scale quite small thanks to the setup that finds the cast of characters locked in a mansion together. Many horror movies have also used the isolated and claustrophobic setting to great effect, butBodies Bodies Bodiesis one the most recent that shares a lot of similarities withAbigail. The movie follows a group of rich and privileged friends who are having a hurricane party at a mansion. When the power goes out and a dead body appears, they begin to turn on each other.
Bodies Bodies Bodiesoperates as a slasher movie as well as a whodunnit withthe cast gradually getting picked off one by one, as withAbigail. It is also a film that embraces its comedy and the fun of the ensemble with many laugh-out-loud moments throughout the story. However, theending ofBodies Bodies Bodiesis the real treat as the carnage and chaos leads to an amazing payoff.
Let the Right One In
Based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel, Let the Right One In is a romance horror/drama that follows Oskar, a kindly young boy who is bullied relentlessly upon moving to a new Swedish neighborhood with his mother. Oskar’s fortunes begin to change when he befriends the dour but enchanting Eli, despite her dark and deadly supernatural secret.
While there are many vampire movies out there, the little girl vampire approach inAbigailis something unique in the genre. It adds another layer of creepiness and makes Abigail a more compelling character. However, while little girl vampire movies are rare,Abigailwas not the first one to do it, and the idea was best used in the Swedish horror movie,Let the Right One In.
It is a fascinating exploration of being a vampire and those who choose to live with them.
The movie follows a young boy who is a social outcast in school and living a lonely life when he meets a young girl who has appeared in his neighborhood. The two children form a bond and he discovers this little girl is actually a vampire. Despite the similar ages of the vampire protagonists,Let the Right One Inis a much darker and more serious movie thanAbigail. It is a fascinating exploration of being a vampire and those who choose to live with them.
Predators
The third movie in the Predator franchise, Predators follows a group of humans who find themselves stranded in a mysterious jungle and hunted by a powerful race of technologically-advanced aliens. Mercenary Royce (Adrien Brody) is a former member of a Special Ops unit, and he finds himself leading the group through the jungle and protecting them from the Predators hunting them. Lawrence Fishburne, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, and Alice Braga all star alongside Brody in supporting roles.
The idea of putting a bunch of colorful and dangerous criminals together as the ensemble of a horror movie, only to have them hunted by something much more formidable and terrifying is a fantastic setup forAbigail. It is also the approach taken byPredators, the most underrated sequel inthePredatorfranchise. The movie takes place on an alien planet where a group of the most dangerous humans on Earth – mercenaries, warlords, and serial killers – become the prey during the Predators' latest hunt.
Much likeAbigail,Predatorsexcels thanks to its wonderful castwith the likes of Adrien Brody, Walton Goggins, and Mahershala Ali starring in the sci-fi horror. Seeing these ruthless and deadly people reluctantly having to work together to ensure their own survival makes for a fun time in the midst of the brutality of Predators as they slaughter their prey.
Don’t Breathe
In Don’t Breathe, three friends looking to escape their lot in life decide to act on information that could change their fortunes forever; a blind veteran with hundreds of thousands of dollars lives alone in a deserted neighborhood. When the trio decides to perform the heist on his home, who they thought to be a feeble aging man with no sight turns out to be far more dangerous and capable than they could have anticipated.
Abigailopens with the cast of criminals kidnapping a young child. It immediately makes all the main characters hard to root for, but the movie does a fantastic job of gradually making the audience care about them and ultimately fear for them when the horror begins. This is another trick pulled off in the intense horror filmDon’t Breathe. It follows a trio of friends desperate for money who decide to sneak into the home of a blind man and rob him.
However, this despicable act is flipped on its head when the blind man proves to be much more capable than he seems as well as more sadistic.The sympathies in the movie quickly shift as the audience is rooting for the young burglarsto get out of the house as they are locked inside with the deranged killer.
Dracula’s Daughter
Dracula’s Daughter: Released in 1936, this film follows a Transylvanian countess who seeks the assistance of a psychiatrist to overcome her vampiric desires.
Abigailis a modernreimagining of the 1936 Universal Monsters classicDracula’s Daughter. Gloria Holden stars as Count Dracula’s daughter and fellow vampire, Countess Marya Zaleska, who seeks to break free of Dracula’s influence and lead a normal life following his death. After failing to break his curse by destroying his body, the Countess instead turns to psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Garth.She abducts Dr. Garth’s assistant,Janet, and brings her to Transylvania for a climactic battle.
WhileAbigailbears little resemblance to its original inspiration,Dracula’s Daughterhas the same sense of vampiric carnage and the same focus on character over horror. LikeAbigail,Dracula’s Daughteroffers a fresh take on the familiar vampire lore amidst a sea of similarDraculaadaptations. And they both have a playful sense of humor under all the terror.
Scream
Scream is a 2022 installment in the horror franchise, set 25 years after the original murders in Woodsboro. The film follows a new Ghostface killer who emerges to target a group of teenagers, bringing the town’s gruesome history back into the spotlight.
Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, the directors ofAbigail, first became household names when they revitalizedtheScreamfranchisewith their 2022 “requel,” simply titledScream. Before Radio Silence came along, it didn’t seem like anyone could direct aScreammovie besides Wes Craven, who directed the first four films. But Radio Silence brought their own unique sensibility to theScreamfranchise, honoring Craven’s legacy while bringing the property into a new era.
It mixes the two genres beautifully
Screamsatirizes a whole new generation of horror filmmakers and their fans, poking fun at reverent franchise reboots and toxic fandoms. Much likeAbigail, Radio Silence’s firstScreammovie strikes the perfect balance betweengory horror violence and goofy slapstick humor. It mixes the two genres beautifully because the scares never detract from the laughs and the laughs never detract from the scares – they complement each other.
Fritz Kiersch
Children of the Corn (1984)
Children of the Corn is now in the pantheon of classic horror movies and there is a lot to like about it. Based on a Stephen King short story of the same name, Children of the Corn is a supernatural slasher set in the fictitious town of Gatlin, Nebraska a small rural town which is surrounded by huge and devious cornfields. The Children of Gatlin are convinced by a particularly evil child, Isaac Chroner, that they need to kill all the adults in the town to appease the gods after a terrible harvest. Isaac, with help of his right-hand dude Malachi, indoctrinates the children into an evil cult that centers around an evil deity called ‘He Who Walks Behind the Rows’. Three years after the initial slaughtering of the town’s adults, the town is provoked back into action as Vicky and her boyfriend Burt stumble into Gatlin after mauling a child with their car whilst on their way to Seattle. Released in 1984, Children of the Corn is quite a low-budget slasher so don’t go into it expecting a huge blockbuster production, but there is a lot to love about it and at times, it is genuinely scary. The film is concerned with the loss of innocence and aspects of religious fanaticism which is a little on the nose considering most of the towns children have biblical names but different twists and turns as the story progresses really drive the point home. The corn fields are a constant reminder of the complete isolation and accentuates the loneliness and danger that Vicky and Burt have found themselves in.
Part of the genre fun ofAbigailis seeing an ostensibly innocent little kid – or, at least, someone who looks like a kid – effortlessly slaughtering a bunch of grownups. The mother of all killer kid movies isChildren of the Corn, Fritz Kiersch’s film adaptation of the Stephen King short story of the same name.Children of the Corntakes place in the fictional rural town of Gatlin, Nebraska, where all the children have been influenced by a mysterious entity to ritualistically murder all the adults.
A young couple named Vicky and Burt are driving across the country when they stumble into the town and run afoul of the murderous children.Children of the Cornplays as a more or less standard slasher, with a conventional story structure and a boatload of blood-soaked violence. However, much likeAbigail, the young children doing the killing put a fresh spin on that formula.
Freaky
Freaky is a film directed by Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day 2U) and centers around a young girl in high school that swaps bodies with a deranged serial killer. When four teenagers are found dead, the Blissfield Butcher’s re-emergence has made the town somewhat on alert. While waiting for her ride home at the end of a football game, Millie Kessler is attacked by the butcher with a mysterious dagger called La Dola, which then swaps the two into one another’s bodies in a Freaky Friday-like fashion. Millie discovers that to get back to her original body, she needs to get her friends and family to believe that their bodies have swapped - and she needs to reverse the ritual in twenty-four hours, or the switch will remain permanent.
Kathryn Newton is one of the standouts inthe cast ofAbigailas reckless hacker Sammy.Abigailisn’t the first horror comedy that Newton has starred in. She previously played the lead role of awkward high schooler Millie Kessler in Christopher Landon’s body-swap slasherFreaky. Best described as a cross betweenFreaky FridayandFriday the 13th,Freakysees Millie unwittingly switching bodies with the Blissfield Butcher, a notorious serial killer played by Vince Vaughn. Millie desperately wants her own body back, but the Butcher wants to keep it, because it’s easier to lure victims in his new body.
Newton and Vaughn both give fantastic performances in this movie, nailing the body-swap acting trick of embodying each other’s roles. Newton is fully believable as a cold-blooded murderer and Vaughn is hilarious as a flustered teenage girl.Freakyis just as funny – and just as terrifying – asAbigail.
Orphan
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Orphan is a psychological horror film in which a couple adopt a mysterious 9-year-old girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), only to discover that she is not who she appears to be. Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard star as Kate and John, her adoptive parents.
The central conceit ofAbigailis that the title character seems like a child, butis actually much older – and is actually a murderer. The same conceit was used in Jaume Collet-Serra’s psychological thrillerOrphan. Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard star as a couple mourning the loss of their unborn child. As a way to process the grief, they adopt a nine-year-old girl with a mysterious past, played by Isabelle Fuhrman.
When the bodies start piling up, they realize their new daughter isn’t what she seems. LikeAbigail,Orphanbuilds up its premise purely as an excuse to indulge in the grisly slasher thrills of a killer massacring unsuspecting victims. However, making the killer a kid and hiding a sinister twist both go a long way toward setting these films apart from their cinematic peers.
