‘Abigail’ Directors Find The Depth In Crazy Situations

Directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin enjoy delving into the absurd.

Their films regularly embrace, in their own words, crazy situations that only progress in their insanity as the run time goes on. We see this unique sensibility plainly in their horror-comedy hit Ready or Not and then of course in their two entries for the ever self-aware Scream franchise. But, even as their plots escalate beyond all expectations, they also stay focused on making sure real, human characters ground the audience perspective.

Their new film Abigail is no different.

The film centers around an eclectic group of criminals who participate in the kidnapping and ransom of Abigail, the daughter of a powerful criminal. However, the simple plan quickly becomes much more complicated when the kidnappers come to understand that the child is actually a vampire who is set on attacking them all.

And if this sounds like a wild concept, that might be precisely what drew the duo in.

“The simple pitch to us of a crime heist kidnapping movie that gets hijacked by a monster movie was just like a fastball down the center for us. It felt like everything tonally that we love was really encapsulated in that hook,” Gillett said.

Abigail originally started out as an intended reimagining of the 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter, which was based on the Bram Stoker short story “Dracula's Guest” and also served as the sequel to the 1931 film Dracula. However the story in Abigail, with a script by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, ultimately resembles very little of those inspirations beyond the concept in the title. But the lack of a mandate to strictly adhere to what came before, and the freedom to do something different, was a big part of the appeal for Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin.

“To Universal's credit they steered us into, ‘What's the most original movie you guys can go make? Just do that,’” Bettinelli-Olpin said.

That is, the studio seemed most interested in an original movie infused with Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin’s unique touch, a style that effortlessly embraces the dark corners of fear and horror, while never missing a comedic beat or an action moment that otherwise keeps their entries entertaining and digestible. There is a tonal balance here that has come to feel like a signature for the duo and their collaborators.

Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin, along with producer Chad Villella, together comprise the creative team known as Radio Silence. And after a few bold horror hits, the group has become known for their successes. However, the team began their public storytelling journey far from the studio system when they started out making short films on YouTube. And they credit much of their growth today to the level of feedback they were able to get on the platform in those early days.

“100 people, or 200 people, or 1,000 people, if we were really lucky, would let us know right away whether or not they liked it in extreme detail. And it really allowed us to kind of find our voices. It allowed us to experiment with genres and tones,” Bettinelli-Olpin said.

The team’s short film “Roommate Alien Prank Goes Bad” still proudly sits on the platform with an impressive 34 million views. The video follows some friends pranking their roommates with alien hijinks, until the supernatural unexpectedly creeps into their shenanigans. And even in this low budget, miniature horror, we can begin to see the creative team’s unique mix of fear, absurdity, and a focus on remaining engaging.

In that vein, the story for Abigail could have been handled in a variety of ways, and Gillett even notes that when they first received the script it was leaning more earnestly into the crime drama aspect of it all. But in this they also saw the opportunity to tell the kind of story that they excel at, the kind of story that follows a character we come to love into a series of events we can hardly fathom.

“Really at the kind of core of that is writing characters that are in a really serious situation, that are taking the situation very seriously, but the situation is simultaneously fucking crazy and absurd,” Gillett said.

Gillett describes this “serious” character in his films as the audience’s tether into the story that keeps them grounded, and for Abigail he describes how Melissa Barrera’s character Joey serves that function as the plot dives deeper into its bizarre escalations. However, the directors go on to say that a fun part of this project was how a certain complexity emerged from the cast as they all built these characters together, and how it led to a level of authentic character depth that audiences might not expect from something that is otherwise a movie about a murderous vampire child.

“You see them kidnap her in the beginning. So they're not good people, they're bad people. But they have heart and they have humanity. And they, to some extent, care about each other throughout,” Bettinelli-Olpin explained.

“An unexpected connection starts to form,” Gillett added.

The duo think back on making this film warmly, and recall how the team had to band tightly together to see this project through as countless challenges emerged. The film initially found itself caught amid the historic Hollywood strikes earlier this year that shut down most of the entertainment industry, including this production. And then from there the team met the sudden news of the passing of one of their cast members, Angus Cloud. All this made the journey to the end a complicated one. But, as they describe it, it also made the creative process into a place of healing.

“There were so many obstacles in this movie and unfortunate events that weren't directly related to the movie that, actually in a weird way, the movie became a bit of a safe haven for all of us, where we could kind of like hold hands and get through it together,” Bettinelli-Olpin said.

When I asked what part of the movie they are most excited for audiences to see, Tyler Gillett recalled a time he finally got to watch the film with an audience in New Orleans. He describes how, as a filmmaker during these screenings, usually he awaits a certain favored scene or moment that he wants to witness the audience reaction to. But during Abigail he found himself feeling that way for one scene, then another, and then another. Until he realized that, if they’d done their job, the movie should be full of only the best moments, an entire run time of events he eagerly wanted his audience to witness.

And here, for Abigail and all its wild story antics, he felt they’d done that well.

Abigail is now playing in theaters. The movie stars Melissa Barrera, Alisha Weir, Kathryn Newton, Angus Cloud, Giancarlo Esposito, and Matthew Goode.

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