Vampire tale is extremely gory but fun, smart; swearing.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 17+?
Any Positive Content?
Violence & Scariness
a lot
Extreme blood and gore. Severed head, headless corpse. Characters explode, spewing blood and gore everywhere. Character falls into a swimming pool filled with partial dead bodies, gore, muck, buzzing flies, etc. Vomiting/spewing blood. Woman is violently thrown around, bashed against walls and windows, choked, stabbed, etc. A person's face is partially chewed off; he gurgles and collapses. Guns and shooting, threatening with guns. Young vampire girl is shot and has her hand burned off by sunlight. Stabbing with metal cross, stake. Child injected with knockout drug. Vampires bite characters in the neck, leading to gory wounds. Characters fall from high places and crash to floor. Character rages with anger. Violent story told about characters being torn limb from limb.
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Characters drink heavily from a well-stocked bar and sometimes drink directly from the bottle. Smoking pot. A character is said to be recovering from drug dependency and is referred to as a "junkie."
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One character misinterprets another's intentions and comes on to her a little too strong; she reacts angrily. Character draws a penis on a passed-out character's face.
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Of the nine characters who appear on screen, four are White men. One is Abigail (Irish actor Alisha Weir), and two others are women, including Melissa Barrera, who was born in Mexico, and Kathryn Newton, who's White. Two others are Black men (William Catlett and Giancarlo Esposito). All characters are on screen enough to have their own backgrounds and agency.
Just because someone has acted badly in the past doesn't mean that they'll continue to do so, so it's not necessary to punish all past transgressions. Appreciate and celebrate people's efforts to improve themselves. Forgiveness is important.
Positive Role Models
a little
Joey has learned from her past mistakes and is attempting to do the right thing. She's brave and cunning and continues in the fight when the chips are down. Despite the fact that she's participating in a kidnapping, she puts her skills to good use and hopes to earn the right to return to her family.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Abigail is a horror movie about a team of kidnappers whose target turns out to be a ballet-dancing child vampire (Alisha Weir). It's well made and even a little funny, but it's also extremely gory. Expect lots of vampire violence, blood and gore spewing everywhere, someone falling into a pool filled with dead bodies, a severed head and a headless corpse, biting, stabbing, vomiting blood, bite wounds, burn wounds, and more. A woman is thrown around, slammed against walls and windows, and choked, and characters—including a child—are threatened with guns and other weapons. Language is constant and extremely strong, with uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "bitch," etc. Characters drink, sometimes to excess, and one smokes pot. One person misinterprets another's intentions and comes on too strongly, and a character draws a penis on another person's face while they sleep as a prank. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
Really really violent , gory and definitely not for children without an adult present to explain to them that the language and behavior is not ok but some parents can care less what words their kids use so there's that
I saw this movie in theaters when it first came out and I have to say, I love this movie so much! I have seen it a total of 6 times now and it never disappoints! It is more of a gory horror, comedy than a straight scare fest but I still love it!
What's the Story?
In ABIGAIL, a team of criminals—code-named Joey (Melissa Barrera), Frank (Dan Stevens), Sammy (Kathryn Newton), Peter (Kevin Durand), Rickles (William Catlett), and Dean (Angus Cloud)—are hired for a kidnapping. Their target is Abigail (Alisha Weir), the young, ballet-loving daughter of a rich and powerful man. The team pull off their assignment easily and take their target to a remote house, where they're met by Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito). He tells them to keep an eye on Abigail, to wait for 24 hours, and to not disclose any personal information to one another. They're left with food and a fully stocked bar, and they begin to pass the night. But there's something they don't know about Abigail.
Using a simple setup with a few clever twists, this gory, slick vampire movie layers in horror and humor in a most appealing manner, moving with ease and confidence almost the entire way. With Abigail, co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, of the collective known as Radio Silence, add another winner to their distinctive filmography. It recalls elements of their earlier movies Ready or Not, which was set in a large, opulent mansion, and Scream VI, which had a bloody showdown in a large, beautiful theater. But this one adds in supernatural elements and a gleeful excess of gore.
The filmmakers establish a tone that incorporates humor without distracting from the true horror of the situation. It doesn't undercut or betray anything; the elements are melded together gracefully. There's time to build characters—or at least enough that we know how we feel about them. And everything is clear and fluid; there's never any junky camerawork or cheap shortcuts. It's entertaining throughout, except for a few small quibbles. In the final act, there's an overcooked element—best not revealed—that detracts from the quality of the story. And then there's Abigail herself, who's at least a couple of centuries old, spending all that time in the body of a small girl. Movies like Near Dark and Interview with the Vampirehave also introduced characters who suffer gravely from a curse like that—being an experienced person in an inexperienced body—but Abigail never addresses this concept. Still, there's enough here to make this nail- and neck-biter well worth recommending.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about Abigail's violence. How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?
Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of horror movies? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?
MPAA explanation:
strong bloody violence and gore throughout, pervasive language and brief drug use
Last updated:
July 15, 2024
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