"We'd write something funny and then would shock you with a scare," he tells IGN. "That became, 'Well, let's surprise you with the laugh,' which stems from our love of all the movies we grew up on. Lost Boys, Poltergeist, those types."
Radio Silence's Bloody Brand of Fun-Filled Horror
It's a balance that doesn't come easy. Too often filmmakers fail to balance humor and horror, either staking horror vibes with goofy gags that destroy the mood, or drowning out laughs with overwhelmingly unfunny stretches. Radio Silence has cracked that code many times now, which is a hallmark they're always striving to deliver. "That balance is everything to us, the magic trick of our tone," confirms Gillett. "We love taking characters [who] at the beginning of the story [are] in for one specific experience, but then at night, their lives get hijacked by something very different, very unexpected, and very uncanny." It's been Radio Silence's template through V/H/S, Devil's Due, Southbound, Ready or Not, two Scream sequels, and now Abigail. "If we've done our work and you care about those characters, not only is it scarier because they're in peril, but it's hilarious because you're watching a bunch of normal people aimlessly try to figure out how to survive this extreme situation."
Abigail is, no question, an extreme situation. Radio Silence locks a group of hardened criminals inside a lavish estate with no instructions besides babysitting duty for 24 hours. Little do they know, their captive — said to be some high-profile underlord's daughter — is a vampire who concocted the whole plan. You're right to assume ferocious violence leads to splendid special effects grotesqueries, with Radio Silence's take on how sunlight hurts vampires reminiscent of Ready or Not's… er… explosive finale. When jokingly asked if Abigail hatched from an idea to blow more bodies up because Ready or Not was so enjoyable, Gillett acknowledges, "We wanted to make sure that if we were delivering on a similar idea, we were going to be doing it in a different and more exceptional way. Bigger and nastier was definitely a part of it."
I mean, as horror filmmakers, who wouldn't want to explode bodies into goopy bursts of viscera and red mist? "They're such fun moments to also create on set — the distillation of scary, gross, and hilarious," beams Gillett. "The actor's reaction to those moments is always the most funny. There's just something so delightful," adds Bettinelli-Olpin when thinking back to not only Samara Weaving on set for Ready or Not, but more recently, Melissa Barrera and Dan Stevens during the Abigail shoot.
However, the more intense the effect, the higher the crafting risk. When prodded about the trickiest gore sequence to execute during production, Gillett spits out two words: blood vomit. "That was a challenge," he admits. "[We had to] safely engineer the rig in a way that was not going to suffocate [the actor], and would also yield [the intended] result. It could have been really funny — and it's supposed to be sort of funny in its extreme absurdity — but you still also want it to feel like, 'I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe they're forcing me to watch this.'" Bettinelli-Olpin says they hope the audience feels "disgusted," as well as giddy with squeamish glee.
Gillett spills how the scene finally came together, in its crimson upchuck glory: "We had talked a lot with the special effects team about how to engineer blood tubes going up into [the actor's] mouth, then hitting a back plate that would push the blood out. We could then enhance it with some photorealistic blood elements that we shot on a green screen." It was a process, but worth every toilsome idea. Once the spewing begins, it's a grand gut-hurled illusion — just one of countless noteworthy SFX accomplishments throughout Abigail.
The Ensemble Is Everything In Abigail
Of course, none of these effects would mean anything without the actors underneath slatherings of thick red juices. Radio Silence has found a dynamite muse in the newest horror heroine "It Girl," Melissa Barrera, who played Sam Carpenter in Scream (2022) and Scream VI. "She has a quality that we love: She's very strong," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "When she's fighting back, you believe that she can fight back." Radio Silence has now trusted Barrera to lead three of their horror stories as an iron-willed final girl type, and she's yet to disappoint. Bettinelli-Olpin goes on to explain that Barrera shows a knack for these roles because in addition to her toughness, "she has a vulnerability before she's fighting back where you really care, as well as her empathy for the characters she's protecting."
"[Radio Silence] has such a unique creative eye, and are able to figure out the right tone of a movie, which is a difficult thing to do — especially with a movie like Abigail," says Barrera, who specifically calls out their generosity as filmmakers. "[Matt and Tyler] let us as actors go in and propose different ideas, and it's always the best idea wins."
Radio Silence also accepted a make-or-break challenge with Abigail, which they created for themselves: relying on a single child actor's performance for the entire film. "It was a real point of anxiety for us," confesses Gillett. "Any movie is only as good as its weakest moment, and it's such a challenge to find someone who can not only play this vulnerable innocent child, but one second later this confident chess master of a monster."
Luckily, Radio Silence found 14-year-old Alisha Weir, who plays a powerhouse adolescent vampire, nailing every facet of the deadly dancing daughter. "There was this playfulness in the way [Alisha played Abigail], it's almost like she's a master in this mix of tone." It speaks to the child actor's ability to win Barrera's Joey over with pouty faces and pinky promises, only minutes later striking fear into the more masculine thugs in the cast. "[Alisha] hasn't watched a ton of horror movies — there's an intuition in her. She showed up to have fun. The idea of Abigail playing with her food was something that she steered into. You can feel that in the vulnerable moments, or the ones where she's chasing Kevin Durand down a hallway. There's a sense of fun and theatricality in her performance that was so fun to watch come alive."
What the Radio Silence duo said about their miraculous pint-sized star showing up to have fun definitely checks out in Weir's testimony about her time on set: "Getting to be a ballerina vampire is not something you can say you've done every day. I was so excited to get covered in blood, [work with] blood cannons, and rehearse for the fight sequences." Ah yes, every teen girl's dream.
Sleazebags, Caring Lugs, and Vampire Influences
Abigail is one of those rare horror films where the entire ensemble shines in their own unique ways. Dan Stevens as a sleazy ex-undercover New York City cop, Kevin Durand as the compassionate and fatherly musclehead, Kathryn Newton as a tattoed rich kid who ditches a cushy lifestyle for hacker thrills — it's a joy watching the entire cast engage with one another. Bettinelli-Olpin revealed that while all the characters were mapped out on paper, the cast was trusted to embellish personalities with plenty of freedom. "Kevin came in, and he had been bulking up [to play] Hulk Hogan, so he had [Hulk's] body. 'I'm not comfortable. This is not how I usually feel.' It was perfect for Abigail, and he really leaned into it as, 'Oh, I can be a slow-witted lug,' but also who is so caring and the one who's the most protective, even though he's really violent."
That said, some character reshapings happened out of necessity. As per Gillett, Stevens' schedule didn't allow him to be available for pre-production costume finalizations. "We were down to the wire, so we had to pre-purchase costumes for Dan. He showed up, and we were like, 'None of this is going to work.' [The costumes] just didn't feel right." What's costume designer Gwen Jeffares Hourie to do? Go on a shopping spree with Dan Stevens, of course. "Dan and Gwen went out and were sending us pictures." Gillett recalls receiving some possible getups and responding with, "Yo, is this a fucking joke? These are amazing, crazy choices, but are we being punked right now?" But Dan had a vision for Frank and argued his case. "To Dan's credit, he really encouraged us to make sure that [Frank] feels every bit the sleazebag that you know and want him to be. You want that flavor in every scene. … We're thrilled with the way Frank looks."
Listening to Radio Silence talk about their cast is a pleasure because their compliments and energy carry a fan-like enthusiasm. It's evident in their conversations, and it's evident on screen. Specifically, if you're a lover of vampire movies, you'll catch nods to everything from Universal's classics to masterpieces like Near Dark. When asked if there's a line they tried not to cross in terms of heaping fan service upon the audience, Bettinelli-Olpin says, "It feels like all of our movies are reacting to the movie we made before in some way, subconscious or conscious. [Abigail] was a reaction to doing two Screams — we didn't want to do fan service at all. We were like, 'Fuck it, no fan service,' but that said, we love all these movies." Gillett reassures, "We're still fans."
If you adore vampire movies, your vampire movie is probably going to feature nods to other vampire movies. That's normal. "For example, the Near Dark reference, we didn't go into that being like, 'This is our Near Dark moment.' But the minute we shot Dan with that blood cannon, we were like, 'Oh, it's Near Dark. We just did Near Dark.'" Gillett chuckles, "Did Bill Paxton walk on the set?"
In talking with the team, what rings loudest is how much fun everyone seemed to have making Abigail. Radio Silence went out on a limb and brought mass-market appeal to a zany after-midnight concept, pumping prestige into a story that you might find at 3 AM on the SYFY channel. It's an action-horror mashup that gracefully lunges for your jugular while cackling with glee. "We love all genres. For us, that's the fun. Whether it's a horror or thriller, a detective movie, anything," says Bettinelli-Olpin. May these boys never stop trying to make us laugh through morbid, monstrous, and hybrid means, because the world needs more movies like Abigail, and more original filmmakers like Radio Silence.
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