The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff discusses
Abigail
with directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.
The movie features Alisha Weir as a ballerina vampire tormenting a group of would-be criminals.

Abigail
is quite different from Radio Silence’s past films, including
Ready or Not
,
Scream 2022
and
Scream VI
, but it does include one of their well-known specialties — buckets of blood.

With the release of Ready or Not in 2019, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, aka Radio Silence along with producer Chad Villella, instantly became some of the most exciting voices on the rise in horror. The movie is a wildly creative and exhilarating horror-comedy romp that culminates in, what I’d argue, is one of the most wonderfully shocking third act set pieces of all time. After spending the entire movie wondering if the le Domas family curse is real, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett reveal the answer in a perfectly paced and executed string of body explosions. Yes, it’s partly horrific, but there’s also a gleeful quality to it, one that reflects the duo’s enthusiasm for going to the max with movie blood. Now, their new movie, Abigail, boasts that same quality, too.

Abigail focuses on a group of criminals who agree to kidnap a 12-year-old girl and watch her for 24 hours in exchange for $50 million dollars. After bringing Abigail (Alisha Weir) back to the requested location, they think the hard part is done. But, little do they know, they haven’t been tasked with babysitting a typical 12-year-old girl. Abigail is a vampire — or rather, a ballerina vampire — and she’s eager to enjoy a full day of tormenting her latest victims.

With Abigail now in theaters nationwide, I got the chance to chat with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett about the evolution of the Abigail script, the film’s connection to Ready or Not you might have missed and, of course, their penchant for going big with blood.

Related Melissa Barrera Breaks Down Her ‘Abigail’ Character in New Sneak Peek [Exclusive] Radio Silence’s latest feature also stars Kathryn Newton and hits theaters April 19.

During my latest Collider Ladies Night conversation with Abigail star Melissa Barrera, she emphasized that Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett love blood, and it made me wonder, what started that passion? At what point in their filmmaking journeys did Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett realize they love going above and beyond with blood and gore? Bettinelli-Olpin began:

“That’s a really good question. I think it evolved over time. I think when we were doing shorts on YouTube, we started taking a step into horror while it was still a comedy, and the blood was fun. And, at the time, it mattered in a real, real way; it was very cheap. We could go get a bunch of blood, and really just kind of go wild with it.
I remember doing one short where we got a bunch of Little Caesars pizzas and some spaghetti sauce and spaghetti, just mixed it all up, and then that was our zombie guts
and stuff. There’s something so tactile about it. And delicious. You can eat it. I honestly don’t know why we’re so drawn to it, but we clearly are.”

Gillett continued by pinpointing their ideal tone for a blood-heavy film:

“I think that we find in the sort of heightened reality of our movies, that a lot of blood —
we don’t ever want it to feel so real that it feels cruel or mean
. It should always feel like it’s the Hollywood version or the absurd version of what you might expect the reality of it to be, and I think that, for us, it’s a little bit of a way for us to just let the audience know that we know it’s fucking crazy and to just enjoy the ride.”

“Fun” Is the Goal with a Movie Like ‘Abigail’

How exactly does Radio Silence go about finding the right balance of humor and horror? They actually shoot two versions of the movie, one that’d function as a full-blown comedy and another that’d feel more like a vicious horror movie. Gillett explained:

“That’s a pretty calibrated — the fun is something that we talk about. And when you’re dealing with humor and horror, we find that those guardrails are something that we’re trying to put in place every moment of the movie.
We shoot a version that could be a straight comedy, we shoot a version that could be that really gruesome, punishing horror movie, and it’s our job to cut those things down so that the movie feels like it’s got a really nice balance of both
, and it’s never one so much that it feels like you’re not sure what the story or the tone is trying to be.”

Looking for even more on the making of Abigail? You can watch my full conversation with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett in the video at the top of this article, and you can also catch my hour-long Ladies Night chat with Barrera below:

Abigail is now playing in theaters nationwide. Click below for showtimes.

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