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Who Lives? Who Dies? And Was That [Spoiler]? The Ending of Abigail, Explained
The genre-bending horror flick has plenty of twists and turns right up to the very end...
This story contains major spoilers for Abigail.
Abigail is a rollercoaster of a film. Directed by Radio Silence, the duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the movie starts off as a Reservoir Dogs/The Usual Suspects-type movie about a group of six criminals looking to get rich quick.
Operating on intel from mysterious organizer Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), the crew kidnaps a 12-year-old girl (Alisha Weir playing the titular character), the plan being to squeeze her wealthy father for a cool $50 million in ransom money. All they have to do is guard the kid in a crumbling old manor house for 24 hours. There's just one teensy-tiny problem...the girl they kidnaped is actually a nigh-indestructible vampire with a love for ripping out throats and Swan Lake. With this realization, the movie switches gears, suddenly transforming into an R-rated horror flick full of bloody twists and turns.
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While the true identity of Abigail was revealed in the very first trailer, the genre-bending project still has plenty of unexpected story beats right up to the very end...
The Ending of Abigail Explained
As we learn, there never was any ransom money. The kidnappers were simply lured to the house because they all ran afoul of Abigail's crime boss father, Kristof Lazar, a dreaded underworld figure with a Keyser Söze-like reputation among those unfortunate enough to know his name After their fellow felons go the way of the dodo, Joey (Melissa Barrera) and Frank (Dan Stevens) retreat back to the manor library to take refuge in the house's protective rays of sunshine. But night is approaching fast and there isn't much time to figure out a plan of escape. They seem absolutely screwed until a secret bookshelf doorway swings open, leading the duo to a control room, where Lambert has been monitoring them since the very start, à la The Cabin in the Woods.
Turns out Abigail turned him into a bloodsucker two years ago, forcing him to lure her father's enemies to their doom on a regular basis. Despite gaining immortality and superhuman abilities, Lambert is sick of catering to the whims of a little girl and her daddy. He incapacitates Joey and presents Frank with a Faustian offer: become a vampire and help take control of Lazar's empire or die.
Frank accepts the deal, but once he earns his fangs, the former cop double-crosses Lambert, driving a stake through the man's heart and killing him. Abigail shows up not long after, proclaiming that their little game of cat and mouse is over. She attacks Frank, who sinks his fangs into the girl's neck, seemingly killing her too.
Now conscious, Joey attempts to flee back to the library, but finds herself unable to open the locked door. Realizing she'll probably die soon, she leaves an emotional voicemail to her estranged son, Caleb. Frank catches up and, now driven mad with power, vows to turn Joey into a member of the undead, so she can do his bidding. First on the agenda? She's going to kill her own child while he watches. He throws her around a bit, ultimately impaling her through the shoulder. Abigail returns, stating that the only way to truly kill a vampire is to completely drain them of blood.
Frank still manages to overpower the girl before turning his attention back to Joey. He bites her on the neck and places a stake into her hand, ordering the disgraced Army medic to finish off Abigail. Joey, seemingly in a vampiric trance, slowly moves forward, but then pivots back in the hopes of vanquishing Frank, whose reflexes are just too fast. Thankfully, Abigail rejoins the fray and, together with Joey, pins Frank down. The 12-year-old gets in one last taunt, explaining that you can’t just take control of victims on your first day of being a vampire, it takes a very long time “to learn how to do all the cool sh--.” They drive the stake through Frank’s heart and he explodes, freeing Joey from the undead curse.
Was Matthew Goode Playing Dracula in Abigail?
A grateful Abigail allows Joey to leave, voicing her hope that the mother can successfully reunite with Caleb. Speaking from centuries of neglect, Abigail states that all a parent really needs to do is show up for their kid. Before Joey can vacate the library, however, daddy arrives. The character is played by Watchmen alumnus Matthew Goode and while he answers to "Lazar" these days, he’s apparently gone by many monickers over the centuries, basically implying that he’s Dracula.
Dad wants to make a meal out of Joey, but Abigail vouches for the woman, standing up to her emotionally distant father for the first time in a long time. “She was here when you weren’t,” the girl says. Lazar reluctantly relents and allows Joey to leave, hinting that she better hightail it out of there because “it’s getting awfully close to dinner time.” Not needing to be told twice, a shaken Joey gets into the van parked outside the house and drives off while enjoying a lollipop from her stash of candy.
Will There Be a Sequel to Abigail?
Recently speaking with SYFY WIRE at the movie's official press junket, Abigail co-director Tyler Gillett sounded off on the film's open-ended conclusion, stating:
"It's a fun question that we haven't really given much thought. I think that's because we try to approach every movie we make as though it's a close-ended story. It feels for us like...as an audience member you can kind of sniff when someone's left a really great idea in their pocket to use later. We're not fans of that. If something is exciting to us and it feels like it should be in the movie, then we do everything in our power to make sure that it ends up in the movie. And hopefully at the end of the day, we love the idea of a story that sort of lives off screen that kind of gets your imagination running as you leave the theater. And that for us is sometimes more valuable even than telling that story. But we love that you think there's an opening. That for us means that we've created characters that hopefully are interesting enough that you want to know what happens next."
"One of my biggest regrets of this movie is that Joey doesn't turn into a vampire," Barrera told SYFY WIRE in a separate interview. "So if we do a sequel, like I would just ask for Joey to turn. You know, she does get bit so there is that chance. And I would love nothing more than to work with Alisha again. That would just be amazing."
Abigail is open in theaters everywhere now. Click here to pick up tickets!
