Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-04-19 (Friday)

In article <v00vjm$3prh1$1@dont-email.me>,
 Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

Abigail (theatrical) New horror movie about a group of kidnappers
(including Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, and Katheryn
Newton) who are hired by Giancarlo Esposito to kidnap a little girl for
ransom. But the little girl (Alisha Weir) turns out to be a blood
thirsty vampire who enjoys playing with her food before slaughtering
them. This was surprisingly good. I think mostly because I went in
expecting a paint by numbers PG-13 jump scare flick, and this turned out
to be a hard "R" gore fest. And the characters were generally smart and
didn't do obviously dumb things. It also borrowed heavily from "Fright
Night" but that is meant as a compliment. This was probably a better
"Fright Night" remake than the actual "Fright Night" remake! Although
it obvious has a different plot with the whole kidnapping thing, there
are some definitely and welcome similarities.

I saw this yesterday and I give it an enthusiastic recommend. This was
horror the way horror used to be done. None of this soft PG-13 horror
nonsense that pervades the genre these days.

The actress playing the little girl was fantastic. Too often child
actors are chosen for their look, not their ability and the result is
suboptimal. This little girl had both looks and ability and really sold
the role.

Melissa Barrera is still a smokeshow.

Kevin Durand is starting to really look old.

It's a good thing Buffy's vampires only exploded into dust when staked.
She'd have had a helluva wardrobe budget if she'd had to deal with this
variety of vampire on a regular basis.

The only thing I'd complain about with this movie is the marketing,
which gave away the 'surprise' in all the trailers and posters. I wish
I'd have gone into this the way I did all those years ago with FROM DUSK
TILL DAWN-- thinking it was a crime heist movie and suddenly have it
turn into a supernatural horror story out of nowhere.

It was a real WTF moment when Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek)
suddenly turned into a vampire in the middle of what up to that point
had been a story about two brothers on a crime spree.