The Stuff I Watched: Abigail, Unsane
We got some bold ideas! But sadly, flawed execution with these ones.
Morning!
I’m so close to graduating, but not from this newsletter! OK, that might’ve been a shitty pun or joke or whatever. Let’s just get to the movies.
Abigail (2024)
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
C
I wish I hadn’t seen the trailer for this movie, which completely spoils the entire inventive and exciting premise all in about two minutes. But would my avoidance of the trailer mean I enjoyed the film much more? I sincerely doubt it.
The film’s first 50 minutes or so take on a hard-boiled, creepy and slightly comedic tone. Once it turns into a vampire movie, there are some truly subversive yet reductive twists and turns.
The directorial duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are the minds behind Scream VI, a film that attempted, and in my opinion failed, to parody and critique horror tropes. It made fun of them and twisted them a bit, but ultimately fell into the same old tired narrative cliches. Abigail is unfortunately no different.
The film mocks ideas like how a vampire’s bite will turn you into one or kill it with a stake to the heart. Much of the drama comes from the criminals’ pop culture notions of what a vampire is. But in a clever turn, the titular evil vampire child makes the wannabe criminals look like idiots for buying into those ideas. Instead, she’s just a lean, mean killer ballerina who seems invincible.
But alas, the filmmakers’ further attempts at being subversive lead to them falling back into the same tired tropes. Instead of turning into a vampire from a bite, you get brainwashed by one. And light does turn out to be a fatal weakness. That’s some of the issues with metamodernist movies. They’ll have postmodern subversiveness but end with bland modernist endings.
The movie also can’t make heads or tails about whether Abigail is a villain or just simply misunderstood. Her relationship with one of the criminals, Joey (Melissa Barrera), serves to ask this question but ends up feeling quite underdeveloped. Again, it was a cool concept and there were definitely some fun moments. But I left the theater feeling disappointed.
Summary: A group of would-be criminals kidnaps the 12-year-old daughter (Alisha Weir) of a powerful underworld figure. Holding her for ransom in an isolated mansion, their plan starts to unravel when they discover their young captive is actually a bloodthirsty vampire.
Unsane (2018)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
B+
This movie does get some crap for being shot on an iPhone. But I truly think director Steven Soderbergh, a man known for pushing cinematic convention, uses the Apple product to the best it possibly could be used in a feature film. Now, do I think that makes the film perfect? Nope. But it makes me interested.
As for the story, the film really takes a turn after the stalker plot becomes more than just backstory, causing the narrative to feel slightly disjunctive. It takes great leaps and bounds to fundamentally expose the American healthcare system via a stalker plot, it definitely doesn’t feel fully realized but it keeps me excited to the very end.
Summary: Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) relocates from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape from the man who's been stalking her for the last two years. While consulting with a therapist, Valentini unwittingly signs in for a voluntary 24-hour commitment to the Highland Creek Behavioral Center. Her stay at the facility soon gets extended when doctors and nurses begin to question her sanity. Sawyer now believes that one of the staffers is her stalker -- and she'll do whatever it takes to stay alive and fight her way out.