Movie gore: it can be controversial and divisive among general movie-goers, but it’s a wonderfully multifaceted cinematic tool. It’s an inexpensive way to add production value to a low-budget project, and if applied skillfully, it can both be used for shock and humor. It’s a unique quality to horror filmmaking – and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will be taking audiences to school on the art form with their new vampire-centric splatter fest Abigail.
This cinematic explosion of blood and guts is one that I got to witness up close and personal last summer when I joined a small group of journalists on a trip to Dublin, Ireland to visit the set of the upcoming horror movie when it was still in production at Glenmaroon House – a sprawling estate that was once owned by the Guinness Family and served as the film’s principal shooting location. The massive, maze-like manor was decked out in bold, disturbing production design, including Hieronymus Bosch-style paintings and freaky taxidermy, but the gorehound in me most appreciated what was described as the “Control Room.” It looked as though one, if not more people had burst like blood-and-organ filled balloons; watching one’s step was necessary as to not stain your footwear in the pools of red, and noticing a small intestine hanging from a light fixture distracted from the melted skull I spotted on the ground.
Abigail is the first original film from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett since 2019’s Ready Or Not. The directors having spent the last few years making the last two Scream sequels, and they described this new flick on set as “a heist movie gets hijacked by a monster movie.” Scream/Scream VI star Melissa Barrera is joined by Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand and Angus Cloud playing criminals who are offered a lot of money to execute the kidnapping of the titular little girl (Alisha Weir). The abduction goes smoothly, and they are told by their employer (Giancarlo Esposito) to hunker down for the night at the spooky Wilhelm Manor, but hunkering down becomes an effort to survive when they realize that Abigail is a literal bloodsucking monster.
What I got to see on set was the best kind of gnarly, but from what the movie’s stars and filmmakers told us on set and in follow-up interviews, the ridiculous levels of horror won’t be limited to just one small room. More than just puddles of blood, there are pools, and actors weren’t just spritzed with fake gore, they were doused in it.
Neither Melissa Barrera Nor Dan Stevens Have Personally Experienced So Much Cinematic Gore
Melissa Barrera and Dan Stevens are two stars who brought established genre cred to the production. Thanks to her two-film run as Sam Carpenter in Scream and Scream VI, Barrera is well on her way to establishing a terrific legacy as a scream queen, and Stevens’ filmography includes, among other titles, the excellent John Carpenter riff The Guest and the best episode of the Netflix anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. They’re seasoned performers when it comes to seeing filmmakers orchestrating terror… but they’ve never seen anything like Abigail.
In a virtual interview last month where she was paired with co-star Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera did her best to sum up what kind of nasty mayhem audiences are in for when the film arrives in theaters later this month. She understands that moviegoers have seen movies with a lot of blood in them, but what’s coming with this film is new:
This is the most blood that I've ever experienced in a movie. I've seen some movies that have like a bathtub full of blood or like, you know, someone like comes out of blood and like in the water. But talking about the amount of blood that you see? It's a lot. We have blood cannons; that says a lot.
Admittedly, those who are familiar with the work of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett probably won’t be too surprised by this description. As part of the filmmaking collective Radio Silence, they cut their teeth early on in their partnership with their contribution to the gore-heavy anthology V/H/S, and Ready Or Not memorably ends with most of the characters spontaneously combusting. But those works are evidently tame by comparison.
In a solo virtual roundtable interview last month, Dan Stevens expressed a matching sentiment to Melissa Barrera’s as far as personal experience with on-screen gore is concerned, and he admired how it’s used for both extreme horror and extreme comedy. Said Stevens,
It was definitely the bloodiest thing I've ever worked on in terms of like, volume. Just pints of red syrup that were required on set. The fun and the ridiculousness of that as well... if somebody vomits up blood, it's like, 'Ok, we've all seen that – but what if it lasts for like a minute?' And just like, 'How good is that?' And just sort of having real fun with that. And I think for Matt and Tyler as well, who have a great sense of humor and are like, really, really fun, lovely, funny guys.
Abigail takes some big swings – and the directors attribute the choices to opportunity that comes from both the material and where they are in their careers.
With Abigail, A Ballerina Vampire Offers An Amazing Tonal Contrast, And Established Success Means Creative Opportunity
Different horror filmmakers have different tonal inclinations, and the works of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett tend to lean into the more “fun” side of things. Their feature debut Devil’s Due and their contribution to the 2015 anthology Southbound are exceptions, but their Scream movies carry on the tradition of meta winks to the audience, and Ready Or Not is as delightful as it is scary. Based on a script by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick (co-writer of Ready Or Not) Abigail is another demonstration of that sensibility, and the director’s really leaned in this time around.
Speaking about the movie’s wildness during a virtual set visit addendum interview last month, Tyler Gillett explained that he and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin wanted to push themselves with their work on the movie, and that the story being told allowed for that to work. Guts flying all over the place has a different taste when said guts are being tossed around by a pre-teen in a ballerina tutu:
I think that we always want to challenge ourselves and find new ways to shock and entertain ourselves. I also think that because of... I'm gonna sort of steer it back to just who our monster is. Because you have this like 13-year-old vampire at the heart of this movie, it just meant that we could go harder and more extreme and have more fun with the gore and the violence because you have her as a young girl as the other guardrail. And the further away those things get, for us, the more fun and absurd the tone of the movie gets.
The script permitted gratuitous exploration of vampire violence… but there’s also a little more to it than that. Having made three successful hits in a row, including two contributions to a beloved franchise, the directors have creative freedom and opportunity now that they didn’t have early in their careers, and they actually resurrected old ideas that couldn’t be properly pulled off when they were making smaller movies. Gillett continued,
There were certain sequences that feel a little bit inspired by some of our other work that maybe we didn't have the sort of time or budget to do right. We definitely are revisiting some fun things in this movie in bigger and more extraordinary ways. But it gets pretty wild. I mean, there were days on set where you couldn't walk anywhere 'cause it was just a bloodbath. And that for us is just super fun. I mean, you build these incredible elaborate sets and then by the end of the shoot it's like, 'Wow, what a crazy transformation.'
The awesome work I saw from the Abigail production design team in Glenmaroon House was freaky enough, but adding a thick layer of blood to anything dials things up.
There Is A Point Where A Lot Of Blood Becomes Too Much Blood
It’s not just rooms, set decoration and props that get splashed in Abigail – it’s people too. Melissa Barrera spoke on this with authority. It was evidently a routine for her to leave the makeup chair covered in fake blood only to return to have more applied. Said Barrera,
Matt and Tyler, we have this joke from the last movie, from Scream VI, they always ask for more spritz – like more sweat and more blood. Hair and makeup will get you ready, and I would always tell them like, 'They're gonna want more.' And they were like, 'OK, well we can always add more, but we can't take away, so we have to go. 'And it was always more. Always. They always want more. It's never enough for them.
The “less is more” concept is apparently foreign to Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett when it comes to covering their female lead in blood, though they did apparently learn in the making of Abigail that there is such a thing as too much. Barrera told us that there was one point where there was so much fake blood on her that her face didn’t properly register on screen:
It did get to the point where I was so bloody that my face just looked like nothing – like eyes and teeth. They had to take away by the end because it was all one color, and the blood was so dark on my face that they actually had to wipe some off to give it some dimension. Because they were like, 'You're basically nothing. There's basically nothing.' And my hair was also like bangs and shorter, so it was just like a blob of darkness and eyes and so they did have to wipe some off. It was a first for them and for me.
Melissa Barrera didn’t describe the sequence that was being filmed at the time of this funny behind-the-scenes story, but it’s probably a scene that fans will be able to recognize when watching the movie.
On that note, it won’t be long until horror fans have that opportunity. Abigail arrives in theaters in the middle of this month – specifically on April 19 – and be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend between now and then for a whole lot more stories from my interviews with the movie’s filmmakers and cast.
