Kathryn Newton

Abigail

20/04/24

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Twelve-year-old Abigail (Alisha Weir) is kidnapped one evening after her ballet class. Sedated, blindfolded and spirited away to an abandoned mansion, she’s held hostage by a ragtag bunch of mercenaries, intent on extorting $50 million from her gangster father (Matthew Goode). But when Daddy doesn’t care enough to cough up, what’s a tweenage girl to do? Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty…

Although it treads a well-worn path, Abigail is more than just tropes and jump-scares. The script (by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick) is witty and spare, the exposition deftly integrated. Although the characters never stand a chance – their subsequent fall is inevitable – they are three-dimensional and interesting, their shifting dynamic always plausible.

The gang are not exactly innocent victims of their story. They’re all prepared to traumatise a child for nothing more than the mighty moolah. But directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett manage to engage our sympathy for the squad, allowing us the time and space to get to know them and understand their motivations.

Medic and former-addict Joey (Melissa Barrera) is the second lead, and we’re on her side from the outset. She’s aghast to learn that the victim is a child, and forms a bond with Abigail straight away. Ex-cop Frank (Dan Stevens) is harder to like: he feels neither shame nor remorse for the work he does; he’s pragmatic and cool. Rickles (William Catlett), Peter (Kevin Durand) and Dean (the late Angus Cloud, to whom the film is dedicated) are all hapless in their various ways, while rich-kid hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton) is just in it for the lulz.

But the tiniest mite packs the mightiest sting, and it turns out that there’s much more to Abigail than meets the eye…

Weir is clearly having a whale of a time in this 18-certificate bloodfest: she more than holds her own with the adult actors. She’s the perfect embodiment of innocence and evil, and it’s great to see her refusing to be typecast. Although it’s an undeniably violent film, the action meets the demands of the story and never feels superfluous.

This grisly thriller is a gem, but be warned: the characters’ endings are often a little bit gory.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Lisa Frankenstein

07/03/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Diablo Cody first came to my attention with Juno (2007), a whip-smart, whimsical piece of work that deservedly won her the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Two years later, her script for Jennifer’s Body, though divisive, was still an impressive piece of work. Since then, her career has been somewhat hit and miss, but her name is still the main reason I choose to see Lisa Frankenstein.

So I’m somewhat nonplussed to discover that the film is a dud. Seriously, the word ‘disappointing’ does not cover how bad this is – a slice of horror comedy that isn’t particularly gruesome (given the PG13 certificate) and manages to be about as funny as a car crash. The kindest thing I can think to say about it is that it has stylish opening titles that promise something much more sophisticated than what follows.

Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) has never quite got over the night when her mother was murdered by a random axe murderer. (Laughing yet?) She now lives with her Dad, Dale (Joe Chrest), who is now married to Janet (Carla Gugino, chewing the scenery as the traditional evil stepmother, yet arguably the most watchable element in the film). Lisa has also acquired a step-sister, Taffy (Liza Soberano), who – against all the odds – is friendly and supportive, which may be the only touch of originality here.

Lisa has taken to spending her spare time in the local cemetery, where she has been brooding beside the grave of a young Victorian male, who died back in 1837. Cue a thunderstorm, a convenient flash of lighting and said creature (played by Cole Sprouse) reanimates and lumbers his way to Lisa’s house, where she – quite by chance – is all alone in her bedroom. The creature is missing a hand and it’s not long before he and Lisa are on the lookout for a replacement…

I honestly want to like this, but almost everything about it misfires. The ‘jokes’ fall flat from the word go; the direction (by Zelda Williams) is perfunctory at best and occasionally rather confusing. While the 1989 setting is decently evoked, the dialogue that emerges from the mouths of the mostly young cast sounds like nothing anyone of that age would ever say. Newton does her best with what she’s been given, but deserves better lines to deliver. It doesn’t help that for nearly all of the film, her co-star Sprouse is only able to make various grunts, growls and shouts.

The film lurches clumsily onwards, powered only by its own internal logic, but when that logic is so fatally flawed, it takes every ounce of my will to stay in my seat until the end. Sorry to all involved, but this feels like a waste of a sizeable budget that could have been spent on something better than this muddled mess.

1.5 stars

Philip Caveney

Freaky

18/02/22

NOW Cinema

Our on-going efforts to catch up with some of the movies that were lost in lockdown continues. Freaky was released at the worst possible time for a film of this kind. Here is something that really needs to be seen with a bunch of friends, in an actual cinema, to be fully appreciated. But, needs must and all that.

To be honest, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy’s spoof slasher movie starts unpromisingly as we see four teenagers gorily despatched by the Blissfield Butcher, a masked killer in the (jugular) vein of Michael Myers. Indeed, there are clear nods to Halloween and other classics of the genre, but the problem is that there’s no real suspense generated here, the killings suspended in that lonely wasteland somewhere between horror and comedy.

Just as I’m thinking of reaching for the ‘off’ switch, however, the film plays its trump card, as The Butcher (Vince Vaughan) attacks troubled teen Millie (Kathryn Newton) with an ancient Aztec dagger and things change significantly. For this, it turns out, is a body-swap story (working title Freaky Friday the 13th). Now Millie is running around in the body of a six-foot-plus male serial killer and she’s having the devil of a job convincing her best friends, Nyla (Celeste O’ Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich), that she’s worthy of their trust.

Meanwhile, The Butcher is wandering gleefully around the high school in Millie’s petite frame, exacting bloody revenge on everyone who is mean to him – and that vengeance is not exclusively directed at his fellow students, either. Teacher Mr Bernardi (Alan Ruck) is also due a healthy dose of comeuppance.

And suddenly it’s working! This edgy mix of killer-thriller and high school romcom feels fresh and inventive, while Vaughan gives a nicely nuanced performance that’s much more adept than the high-camp caricature familiar from this genre. Newton handles her inner malevolence with skill and Osherovich, as Millie’s snarky gay friend, is given some genuinely funny lines to deliver. As he observes to Nyla: ‘You’re black, I’m gay. We are SO dead!’

The subsequent killings have much more impact now that we actually have characters that we can care about – and the pace is too frantic to allow time to consider the improbabilities of the plot.

But, you can’t help but wonder, how on earth are they ever going to tie these various strands into a satisfying conclusion? Suffice to say they do, and, most refreshing of all, there’s no attempt to dangle the possibility of a sequel.