★★★★

A deliciously simple premise delivers gory satisfaction in Abigail, the first post-Scream horror from Radio Silence directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. In short, a pint-sized, tutu wearing, vampire torments ragtag criminals in a Scooby-Doo mansion. It’s proper elevator pitch material and ballet’s bloodiest episode since Darren Aronofsky pitched Natalie Portman against Mila Kunis. Neither would last a pas de trois on stage with Alisha Weir.

The rising Irish starlet, most recently of Wicked Little Letters but known best as Netflix’s musical Matilda, plays the titular 12-year-old, daughter of Kristof Lazar, a much feared crime lord of the darkest underworld. Fresh home from a late night ballet rehearsal, Abigail is kidnapped by six crooks and whisked away to a secluded, middle of nowhere, estate. She’s there at the behest of Giancarlo Esposito’s Lambert, the shady suit choreographing the heist. The price on her dainty head is a cool $50m. All Lambert’s irregulars need do for their cut is keep Abigail safe and secure for twenty-four hours. She’s twelve. It could hardly be easier.

The make up of the group is exactly as one might expect, which is to say that their personalities serve only to what the film demands. There’s the loafer, the muscle, the ditsy blonde and the femme fatale. It’s neither sophisticated nor progressive but dumbly effective and buoyed by smart casting. Take the ditz; she’s elevated tenfold by Freaky and Ant-Man breakout Kathryn Newton. As for the femme fatale, they don’t come better than Melissa Barrera, reuniting with her Scream directors and proffering much the same subversive power. Dan Stevens plays a mercurial ex-cop, while Kevin Durand, Will Catlett and the late Angus Cloud, to whom the film is dedicated, round off the team.

Unnamed for personal protection, each criminal is instead titled after a member of the Rat Pack, an alias device that works best in reverse. This pack of rats is ripe for trapping. Here’s the twist: young Abigail is actually a centuries-old vampire and part-time hit girl. The penchant for ballet is legitimate – Weir spends the whole film in full Anna Pavola and a pair of bedazzled pumps – but so is the hearty blood thirst and murderous streak. She could have wiped them out in seconds but concedes ‘I like playing with my food’.

Weir is outstanding here, once again demonstrating a screen presence some way beyond her years. It is with effortless flair that she flirts between ingénue and incubus, her shifts in manor almost imperceptible…until it’s too late. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett drench Weir in frankly alarming quantities of faux blood throughout her spree, although only drawing on a fraction of their supply for the film. All get their Carrie moment here. Certainly, an early decapitation sets out a high benchmark for nauseating nastiness, building to an almightily gory crescendo as the credits loom. Just as you think you’ve got the measure of the thing, you’ll realise you too have been Abigail’s plaything.

It’s all tremendously gothic too. The labyrinthine mansion setting proves pitch perfect for hair raising spookiness, while a touch of the fantastical can’t help but arise from the blurring of Brian Tyler’s score with the central theme of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Aspects of lore are gifted a playful triviality, with humour well laced through the horror. Abigail may be owe its origins to Lambert – see the nod? – Hillyer’s Universal Monster flick Dracula’s Daughter but is every bit its own beast.

T.S.