Abigail on Abigail

I rarely watch movies, but one called my name: Abigail, a new horror film about a twelve-year-old ballerina vampire. Friends insisted that I watch and review it, joking that the movie is inspired by my life. I will set the record straight: My name is Abigail, I was a ballerina, I did attempt to suck the progressive blood out of my campus as an undergraduate, but — contrary to popular belief — I have never been twelve years old.

During my long flight from London to Washington, D.C., on Friday, I watched Abigail because it was free on the little television embedded in the seat. I generally dislike horror movies because they are usually bad, not because they make me uncomfortable. Most “horror” films truly belong in the comedy genre because their plots depend on impossibly stupid characters who make easily avoidable mistakes. I expect horror movies to have surprises, yet they all include the same tropes: The doors suddenly lock in a remote house, nobody has a working phone, and there’s a creepy kid — all of which occur in Abigail. I will admit that I did find Abigail scary, just not for the reasons intended by the screenwriters. Somewhat ironically, I was disturbed only by the ballet scenes.

Abigail begins with a close-up of a dancer’s legs as she walks onstage in pointe shoes, with bent knees and nearly parallel feet that must be the products of poor training. (Indeed, the young actress Alisha Weir began training to go en pointe just eight weeks before filming began, which simply doesn’t compare to the years that most girls spend preparing for those uncomfortable shoes.) Just a minute into the movie, I cringed, genuinely concerned that the young actress would injure herself, and I was alarmed that the production team had jeopardized her safety.

The opening scene had other frustrating ballet-related flaws. I was perplexed by the setting: Abigail dances alone in an empty theater, but any performer knows that an onstage rehearsal always includes a shouting director, other artists who are warming up backstage, and staff in the wings managing the props. It would have been more sensible — albeit less dramatic — to show Abigail practicing alone in a studio, or perhaps rehearsing in the theater alongside other dancers.

But what annoyed me the most was that Abigail’s pointe shoes make a thumping sound with each step. Anyone who has ever attended a ballet knows that ballerinas are seen and not heard — intentionally so. Since new pointe shoes aren’t exactly wearable, ballerinas tailor them with a wide variety of adjustments for a perfect fit, and this often includes banging the shoes against a hard surface. Pointe shoes make less noise the more they are worn, so banging them expedites the process, making them virtually soundless. Evidently, the movie’s team opted for shiny and noisy new pointe shoes, thereby disregarding the standards known by professional ballerinas and their enthusiastic audiences.

The first five minutes provided evidence that I would hate the movie, but I kept watching because I had nearly eight hours of flight time left and free wine. Over the course of the two hours, I watched a chauffeur bring Abigail home, where she is abducted and then smuggled to a mysterious mansion tucked away in a swamp; the kidnappers plan to monitor Abigail for 24 hours and expect to get paid a nice ransom from her gazillionaire father. As it grows dark outside, Abigail becomes a vampire, and her ballet training equips her with dexterous combat moves to fight the kidnappers. She pirouettes and penchés to stab a guy’s leg, a skill I never perfected. While chasing a victim, she leaps in the air and chaînés. Some of Abigail’s moves, like a back-handspring, are not ballet steps and must have been learned in gymnastics classes instead. To my disappointment, the movie that centered on a ballerina didn’t have much ballet, and the brief snippets of her dancing weren’t performed well.

My annoyance with Abigail is one example of a universal cinematic experience. Any film that heavily features a particular discipline — a sport like gymnastics, a skill such as playing an instrument, or really anything that requires training — naturally attracts viewers who are interested in that activity. But those viewers have knowledge about how the relevant skill should look, so they’re capable of pointing out all the errors in the movie’s execution. I had the same issue with Abigail that my tennis-playing friends had with the movie Challengers: The featured discipline is treated like a costume that an actor can simply wear rather than a skill or passion that demands attention to detail. Watching a poor representation of your beloved hobby feels like watching an insulting parody, and you’re left to conclude that the director was too lazy to consult an expert for guidance and that the actors weren’t given proper instructions.

Although my review seems overwhelmingly negative, Abigail is a perfect plane movie. It was entertaining and engaging enough that the flight seemed a bit shorter but not so riveting that I should have spent money to see it in a theater. Abigail isn’t exactly a thriller; it has some gross and unpleasant moments that involve oozing blood, but nothing that startled me. (This is probably good, for if I had screamed on a plane, I imagine other people would have joined in.) Still, Abigail is horrifying to those of us who appreciate ballet and are disturbed by bad technique.