Horror hasn’t been a primary go-to genre for me as I’ve aged, but I’ll check out a given work in just about any genre if it can sink a hook into the elusive target that is my set of aesthetic peculiarities. (And by “hook” I do not mean I award imaginary brownie points for use of the empty “elevated horror” label.) In the wake of the Hollywood-wide restart after last year’s dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, some 7,000 new, quick-bake horror flicks will be coming to theaters over the next several months as studios catch up on their precious blockbuster assembly-line schedules. Amid the flood of recent blood-soaked trailers — from high-concept to lowbrow to “the plot is a spoiler!” — one pitch spoke to me from the fray: “From the directors of the last two Scream movies!”

If the preceding sentences sound familiar, it’s because they’re largely lifted from my previous write-up of Late Night with the Devil. If horror flicks have taught me anything, it’s that recycling is cool. Sometimes old parts can be reused in a new contraption without collapsing. Sometimes the contraption is pretty nifty, like folding a newspaper into a sailboat, or making an omelet with leftover taco filling, or lifting the one-line concept from an old Universal monster movie but throwing away the rest of the movie because no one remembers it anyway.

Hence, directors Matt Bellinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (d/b/a the team “Radio Silence”) present Abigail. The 1936 work that inspired it is a spoiler. Its entire trailer is a spoiler. Fortunately it doesn’t spoil the whole runtime, as more twists abound and a crack ensemble makes up the difference in their performances whenever the writing withholds too much.

Our initial setup seems a fairly basic caper (nowhere near convoluted enough to call it a “heist”) to kidnap a billionaire’s tween daughter (Alisha Weir, of Netflix’s Matilda and the recent Wicked Little Letters) after her evening ballet recital in a weirdly empty theater. A team of strangers has been hired for the job:

• Dan Stevens (differently accented from his recent Godzilla x Kong adventurer) as the cocky leader
• Kathryn Newton (looking to leave Quantumania behind) as the spoiled-rotten thrill-hacker
• Will Catlett (the reluctantly immortal gangster Lala from The CW’s Black Lightning) as the stoic sniper
• Angus Cloud (of HBO’s Euphoria, who died last July) as the stoner wheelman
• Kevin Durand (an experienced Big Bad from Locke and Key and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) as the brainless muscle
• Last but most, Melissa Barrera (from those last two Scream chapters and infamously not the next one) as the field medic whom we realize is the actual main character when she gazes upon the estranged kiddo on her phone’s lockscreen and shows the slightest empathy toward their target.

Our Antiheroes do the job Reservoir Dogs style — i.e., no names, no backstory sharing, just fake names — except they’re each so doggedly individualized that even a beginner-level people-watcher can predict their baggage. One particular bonding scene explores how nowadays everyone thinks they’re so very different from everyone else, yet it’s easier than ever to reduce someone’s entire persona to a smug Sherlock monologue. Such moments of team interplay afford each actor — nary a dullard in the lineup — quite a few turns to build camaraderie or rivalry in deeper ways beyond the snarky dialogue by screenwriters Stephen Shields and Guy Busick (Radio Silence’s Scream chapters and Ready or Not).

The team absconds to an old mansion at the choosing of their employer (the amazing colossal Giancarlo Esposito!), who promises they’ll earn millions for their service. All they have to do is hold onto the girl and survive the night there, always the biggest catch in every too-good-to-be-true “free one-night mansion stay!” travel deal. Same as every movie caper or heist ever, the plan goes off the rails on both conditions. Their captive is no mere tiny dancer: she’s a double-proficiency vampire ballerina who might be just as old and vicious as Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire. Worse still, soon as she bares her fangs, all the exits slam shut. IT’S A TRAP.

Apart from a few perfunctory, pointless minutes of red-herring ambiguity about what’s really happening (where’d she go? did someone else abduct and kill her in a closet? is some other killer hiding in the shadows? Is one of the crew pulling a double-cross?), it’s hunter-vs.-hunted except the hunter is disguised as an entry-level Swiftian. She’s all but snarling, “I’m not locked in here with you! You’re locked in here with me!” as she stalks and arbitrarily almost-kills them one by one. If she weren’t outnumbered and her predators-turned-prey were horny teens sans street smarts, this would’ve been a half-hour short, possibly one-third of some themed horror triptych alongside other tales of a zombie violinist or a drama-club mummy or a teen chess champion whose pawns contain the souls of her victims.

As it stands, they do have some professional resources to pool. Wisely, their first priority — examined in the funniest scene — is discerning which kind of pop-culture vampire they might be facing. A traditional one with the classic long list of weaknesses? One of those modern, overpowered, Everything You Know About Vampires Is Wrong hotties who aren’t really vampires so much as they’re just blood-drinking DC supervillains? Or a compromised in-betweener, which means they’ll have to try everything, see what works, and hope any of them live long enough to see the scientific method to the end? And how many other splatter-flicks can they reference along the way without feeling like secondhand characters themselves?

From there, the audience is tasked with betting on how closely the death order will follow the callsheet order. The film tips its hand early to light up Barrera as the Final Gal, but beyond her, anything or anyone goes. Fortunately the ensemble strike up considerable chemistry amongst their differences, enough to mourn the intermittent murders. Yes, there’s the occasional fanging, a minion-turning of sort, and at least one twist neither telegraphed nor spoiled in the trailer. Each vampire looks lovingly creepy, taken a step above the norm in that the makeup team gives every vampire their own individual look, rather than churning them out of the same mold. Gone are the days of Buffy/Angel facial ridges looking like members of the same Klingon troop.

For a good span, though, it gets almost too easy to forget this is a vampire flick. Through several sparring rounds Abigail relies more on her supernatural strength than her creature-of-the-night skill set — admittedly challenging to employ in a mansion where most of the rooms remain fully lit all night long — to the point where the caper-flick switches genres to medium-powered superheroics. Give Barrera some wacky gadgets and this could’ve been a Birds of Prey sequel. I’m not quite complaining, as the action is slickly shot and allows us moments to breathe just long enough till the next surprise jolts us again. By the final act, though, it’s all about the vampirism rift between the survivors and the undead, all drowning in buckets of grime and fountains of blood, perhaps too unsubtle to qualify as Grand Guignol. Sometimes the only difference between vampire movies and superhero movies is the bloodshed, and sometimes not even that. Eventually Abigail remembers.

Among the cast’s VIPs, Barrera bracingly explores her deadbeat-mom/kidnap-abetter dichotomy to confirm why the directors kept her on speed-dial despite the one headline controversy; Stevens adds to his ongoing series of fearlessly flamboyant freaks as if desperate to wipe the name “Matthew Crawley” from any future Q&As forevermore; and the young Ms. Weir shows us a prodigy’s chops — at turns innocent, menacing, scheming, occasionally open to negotiation, and nuanced enough to evince more than one mode of vulnerable, regardless of which side’s ahead on the vamps-v.-mortals scoreboard. A film built around a child-star core can go bravely or broken depending on their talent level and whether the adults can coax the best from them; here, the risk pays off, hopefully in ways that weren’t damaging to her behind the scenes. (After Quiet on the Set, Showbiz Kids, and other works on the subject, it’s getting harder out here not to fear the worst about any NSFW Hollywood production costarring minors.)

As I expect is the case for much of the recent horror-flick streak at theaters, Abigail isn’t aiming for deeper meaning, apart from the morals of Negligent Parents Ought to Do Better, and Every Get-Rich-Quick Scheme Has a Price. It’s a well-buttered popcorn-heavy roller-coaster that arcs upward and into a veritable Red Sea of monster-movie over-the-toppiness. It might’ve qualified as fully classy if they’d added another ballet number or two.

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Yes, the vampire daughter’s father shows up with a special guest in that role — an actor who’s been name-checked in four previous MCC entries and technically shares a major IMDb credit with one of the other cast members, though they never shared a scene in that work. His cameo is short, sweet, and scary, and he wears it well.

Otherwise, unless we start exploring the stunt team’s resumes, those named above are literally the entire cast — no other cameos, no other supporters, no crowd scenes, no Concerned Spouses back home, no exposition from newscasters or radio DJs, nary a stray extra wandering by. Far more of the budget went to makeup and VFX than to the thespian head count.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Abigail end credits per se, but the last waves of fine print scroll away accompanied by one last vampire ballerina giggle from the darkness, as if to say ABIGAIL WILL RETURN. If she does, any sequel would have to delete another role or two so they can afford the Marvel de-aging CG they’d need to maintain her immortality at ballet-class age.