After I enjoyed Radio Silence’s Ready or Not, Abigail climbed my list of things to watch in the immediate future. And It definitely entertains.

Once again, a group of people find themselves trapped in a mansion (this time it’s the Guiness Manor in Ireland). This time it’s for twenty-four hours while they hold a young girl, the titular Abigail (Alisha Weir), hostage. The characters are not quite villains but they aren’t nice people.

They have been recruited by Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) to kidnap Abigail for ransom. He christens the members of the group after the Rat Pack, Joey (Melissa Barrera), Frank (Dan Stevens), Dean (Angus Cloud), Peter (Kevin Durand), Sammy (Kathryn Newton) and Rickles (William Catlett).

They think things are going to go easy, everything is going to be a piece of cake. But once Frank discovers who Abigail’s father is, things start to go sideways, as they realize that Abigail isn’t locked in with them, they’re locked in with her.

And this kid has bite.

Darkly funny, wonderfully gory, the film is able to straddle the line of horror and comedy and make it look easy.

The film rockets along, giving the barest of broad strokes to define who each of the characters are, but also lets the actors play, there’s some wonderful byplay between Durand, affecting a brusque Quebecois accent (his own), and Newton.

If you know what is going to happen going in; surprise Abigail is a vampire, then it ends up being a lot of fun. It plays with the genre, and the tropes of vampire films, Sammy gets to riff on what type of vampire Abigail could be, as there is so many variations in pop culture.

Weir, who was wonderful as the lead in Matilda, goes all-in as a vampire, and looks like she’s having a great time. She also differentiates her performance, easily separating the child image and the vampire with posture, language and attitude.

The laughs are solid, which means, the blood and gore have to equal that, getting to the point where it’s so gross that you have to laugh because it’s so ridiculously horrific.

I had a really good time with this one, and it reminds me that I should really check out the other films Radio Silence has cranked out. Ready or Not and Abigail are just fun as hell. They have the laughs and the horror, and remind viewers that sometimes it’s just fun to watch a movie and be entertained.

Keep em coming Radio Silence!