Criminals get more than they bargained for when they kidnap the daughter of an underworld figure in the new Radio Silence film featuring Alisha Weir in the title role.

For a significant portion of its running time, the new film from the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (better known as Radio Silence) plays like a hard-boiled crime drama. In its opening scenes, we see a rag-tag team of criminals prepare for and then commit the kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl. First seen dancing ballet by herself in an empty theater, she obviously comes from wealth, getting into a chauffeured limousine after her exertions. The kidnappers, who’ve dubbed her “Tiny Dancer,” manage to snatch her away and bring her to a secluded mansion, where they’re greeted by their mysterious organizer (Giancarlo Esposito), who gives them fake names inspired by the members of the Rat Pack (Frank, Joey, Dean, etc.). So far, so Quentin Tarantino.

It’s a deliciously silly conceit, and the filmmakers — whose previous hits include Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and Scream VI — run with it, demonstrating such an exuberant commitment to the genre that the movie industry may be facing a shortage of fake blood.   

Once her true identity is horrifyingly discovered, the criminals respond exactly as most people would. “Okay, what do we know about vampires?” one of them asks, before they reasonably go looking for vampires, wooden stakes, etc. Unfortunately for them, Abigail proves more powerful and resourceful than most of the undead, revealing a particular talent for bargaining with her would-be captors before dispatching them. In the sort of little-girl voice that would be heartbreaking if you didn’t know she was capable of biting your head off.

Vampire movies are, of course, a dime a dozen (the most recent major studio example being The Last Voyage of the Demeter), but few are as gleefully anarchic as this one. For instance, I can’t recall any others in which a pre-teen Nosferatu, clad in a tutu, dances a pas de deux with a headless corpse.

Breathlessly paced and filled with the sort of black humor that makes it as much a comedy as a horror film, Abigail is wildly entertaining for most of its running time, although it becomes overly burdened with baroque narrative flourishes. The joy exhibited by the Radio Silence directors in delivering as much excessive gore as possible is matched by the terrific ensemble, who must have spent much of the shoot getting hosed down after takes. Take Stevens, for example. With his looks, he could easily be a leading man in Nicholas Sparks adaptations. Instead, he’s opting for entertaining character turns such as this one, in which he seems to have stepped out of an old gangster movie. And why not? After all, as a romantic lead he wouldn’t have the opportunity to exuberantly deliver such lines as “Okay, let’s go kill us a fucking vampire!”