Even if you’re an experienced genre fan, there is a particular scene in the upcoming horror movie Abigail that you should probably brace yourself for. The titular character, a young ballerina who is also a ravenous vampire, unleashes a whole lot of carnage in the film, but there is one particular sequence involving a pool full of bodies that is evidently extra levels of grotesque. The actor who plays the feature’s eponymous monster, Alisha Weir, was particularly freaked out by the set, but Kathryn Newton has described her time in the blood-filled tank as being exhausting, gross, and awesome.
Newton spoke about her experience in the body pool last summer when I joined a small group of other journalists on a trip to Ireland to visit the set of Abigail when it was still in production. The actress plays one of the criminals who kidnaps Abigail at the start of the film (not knowing what she is), and the story finds her character in some wild, deeply awful circumstances. Comparing the on-set experience to her work on Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, Newton told us,
This movie has been... Oh my gosh. It's the most traumatic experience I've ever had in the best, coolest way. Like grossest, most difficult physically. I just did a Marvel movie and this is way harder. It's way, way harder physically. I had to do something where I jump into a pool of bodies. And yeah. Look, it was so thick that I sat and didn't move. Like, that's how gross and thick it was. I hope like in my belly... All I was thinking about, you know, maybe this is good or not, but I was really thinking about the audience, 'cause that was the only thing getting me through.
Every artist makes certain sacrifices for their work, and it seems that this was an example for Kathryn Newton. Being immersed in a pool of blood and bodies – even though they are totally fake – sounds pretty miserable, but the good news is that she was able to find motivation thinking about how much audiences are going to love it.
Continuing, she explained that she was taxed with a mix of both extreme physical exertion and extreme disgust swimming around in the production design:
It was comfortable, but I was sweating so much. I was so hot because I was working so hard. They did everything to make me comfortable. Everyone did their job. But it was like, it was just like, 'Oh my God.' It was so gross. It was heavy. The blood, the screaming... it looked so, so good! But I was really thinking because it was so hard physically, you can get stuck there; just as a person you're like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm tired.' So what I thought of before every take was, 'Don't go watch this movie and be disappointed that you didn't like kill it. You know, because you're already doing this anyway.'
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are certainly developing a reputation for making crowd-pleasers, and thanks to contributions from performers like Kathryn Newton, Abigail will hopefully continue their streak. As far as full features go, their breakout hit, Ready Or Not, is a blast (particularly the explosive ending), and they did justice to the beloved work of Wes Craven with both Scream and Scream VI. There are a lot of expectations for their latest, but early buzz suggests that it will be another bit hit with audiences.
Starring Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Alisha Weir and Giancarlo Esposito, Abigail arrives in theaters on April 19. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more stories from my time on set and interviews with the cast and filmmakers.
