Film Shapes

The best looking film of the year, this has a gorgeous array of visuals that elicited a number of quiet 'wows' and intakes of breath from yours truly. Big praise to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, production designer Craig Lathrop, art director Robert Cowper, set decorator Beatrice Brentnerova, and of course, director Robert Eggers for getting this crew together - he seems to use a lot of the same folk for his films, and fair enough, when this is the final product. Eggers has adapted the script from Henrik Galeen's original for F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, itself none too subtly ripped off from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula . This is Eggers' fourth feature after The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman and while I haven't yet seen the first two, I didn't care much for The Northman , typically wondrous images aside. He flirts with the pomposity that affected his previous film but here it matches the gothic tones and source text, that is until Aaron Tayl...

Abigail follows in the tradition of using a woman's name for the film title: Carrie , Christine , Coraline , Mandy , M3gan , Pearl (with MaXXXine on her way), and these are only from the horror genre. Titling is not the only thing lifted from elsewhere. The story sees a gang of crims carrying out a kidnapping only to find the tables turned when they realise the victim is not so....fragile. It's very difficult to speak about this film without giving the game away, and that's possibly one of the reasons why it didn't grab me. It really would have been enhanced had the marketing not laid out the 'twist' but these are the times we live in. By plugging this as a vampire ballerina film, the gang's surprise is not shared by the audience. Once that realisation is out of the way, it settles into a pretty tread-worn rhythm. Expendable members are dispatched, relationships are made and betrayed, blood and viscera are spilled. The film goes through the motions until ...