2024 saw plenty of fine movie performances. Marianne Jean-Baptiste was great in Hard Truths, Chris Hemsworth was a great antagonist in Furiosa, and Mikey Madison is a frontrunner to win an Oscar for her role in Anora. As usual, horror had its fair share of memorable performances as well.
Demi Moore in The Substance, Nicolas Cage in Longlegs, and Cailee Spaeny in Alien: Romulus are a few of the noteworthy performances in horror during 2024 that prove the genre is unfairly overlooked when it comes to great acting. One of the year’s best performances came in an underrated horror film that most audiences quickly forgot. We’re talking about Abigail and Alisha Weir’s spectacular role in the vampire horror film.
What Is ‘Abigail’ About?

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Release Date

April 19, 2024

Runtime

109 Minutes

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directors of the two most recent Scream entries, Abigail follows a group of six kidnappers who find out their latest job: they have to kidnap a girl and keep her safe in a remote house in the middle of nowhere. Joey, a recovering drug addict and former Army medic, is in charge of keeping the girl asleep with narcotics, and like the others, she feels like this should be a pretty easy gig. They just have to take care of the girl for 24 hours, and they’ll get $50 million. Easy-peasy, right?
Abigail wakes up and, going against the rules, Joey starts talking to the girl, who warns her that her father won’t pay any ransom money. Before Joey leaves the room, Abigail apologizes for what’s about to happen to her and the rest of the kidnappers. Eventually, they realize Abigail is the daughter of an infamous and ruthless crime lord. They have messed with the wrong guy.
A vicious creature decapitates one of the kidnappers, and they learn that Abigail is not a regular kidnapping victim. She’s actually a vampire who loves ballet dancing and also loves playing with her food. Joey becomes the leader who tries to escape with the others, only to realize they’re trapped in the huge manor with a monstrous vampire.

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Who Is Alisha Weir, the Actor Who Gives Life to Abigail?

15-year-old Irish actress Alisha Weir plays Abigail in one of the most noteworthy performances of 2024. Weir is also known for her role as Matilda Wormwood in Matilda the Musical, the 2022 fantasy musical inspired by Roald Dahl’s book and the 1996 film Matilda. The film, released by Netflix, was acclaimed by critics, who saw in Weir a notable young performer who shone beyond her strong musical skills. Her performance earned her the Breakthrough Artist – Irish award from the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle.
For her performance as Abigail, Weir has also received a lot of attention. She made an impact in the horror community and was nominated for the Best Supporting Performance category at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, and for Best Young Performer at the Critics’ Choice Awards. Not bad for the young newcomer who debuted in 2018 in the thriller Don’t Leave Home.
Her next projects include voice acting in the animated film The Land of Sometimes, alongside Jessica Henwick and Ewan McGregor. There’s also a rumor that she will play Dorothy in the upcoming sequel Wicked: For Good, but nothing has been confirmed.
Why Alisha Weir’s Performance in ‘Abigail’ Is So Memorable

We’ve seen plenty of notable child performances in horror—Linda Blair in The Exorcist, Isabelle Fuhrman in Orphan, Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed. The genre has no shortage of great performers who took the “evil child” concept to very high levels. Nevertheless, Weir had a challenge, and she bravely beat the odds that were against her.
A vampire is evil by default. Weir could have just creepily snarled and shown her teeth. She could have also eerily crept around the floor like evil and possessed children are supposed to do in these films. But what she actually does is provide personality to her character beyond the obvious fact that she’s a vampire.
For the film, she trained in ballet dancing, and she also did her own stunts. She has screen presence; the grace she incorporates into the character both when she’s adorable and when she’s butchering people represents the necessary balance between jokes and violence in horror. She’s Abigail, and she has enough of a story to make you care for her.
It’s no secret that the directors of the movie are known for expanding characters beyond the most obvious features. Weir shines in Abigail, but then so do Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, Kathryn Newton and Angus Cloud. Their characters are very well-designed to add another layer of fun to the genre mashup that is the horror comedy Abigail.

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‘Abigail’: A Fine Example of the Vampire Subgenre

One of the most underrated horror entries of 2024, Abigail came and went without shaking up the box office beyond expectations. The Universal Pictures film made $42.8 million at the box office from a $28 million production budget. It wasn’t a massive financial hit, but then, many great horror films aren’t.
Abigail doesn’t aim at rewriting the rules of the genre or changing the vampire tropes that have made the horror subgenre one of the most successful. When you narrow it down to the very specific spot of horror comedies, then these movies are more based on niche reception than mainstream. They’re designed to please particular members of the audience who have fun seeing the same tropes adapted over and over again.
Nevertheless, Abigail does offer a great twist. Not in terms of the story but in character journeys that are not commonly found in horror movies. We could expand on the backstories of the kidnappers because they’re pretty interesting, yet Alisha Weir’s Abigail stands above them all with her gracious ballet moves, her brutal killing streak, and her very endearing personality. Centuries of practice could be observed in the spectacular performance by one of 2024’s most underrated starlets.