A monster with high-art refinements: In a way, Abigail has less in common with Nina Sayers, the heroine of “Black Swan,” than she does with Hannibal Lecter, who likes a little Bach with his (grisly) dinner. Ballet, a dance of courts and gilded theaters, “is shorthand in film for old-world, aristocratic, wealthy, European,” McLean said. It telegraphs that Abigail is no barbaric horror fiend but instead a sophisticated aesthete, which makes her both scarier and funnier.
“Abigail” also inevitably brings to mind last year’s hit “M3GAN,” another campy horror film featuring a dancing girl-who-is-not-a-girl. Both Abigail and the robotic doll M3GAN are performative killers, using dance to keep their victims watching even as they hunt them. “We are very open to the Abigail-versus-M3GAN universe,” Gillett said, laughing.
The way “Abigail” uses ballet evolves over the course of the movie. Before Abigail’s bloody secret is revealed, ballet is meant to code her as young, innocent, an easy mark. One of the kidnappers sneeringly refers to her as “Angelina Ballerina.”
After she enters vampire mode, it becomes an exultant expression of power. Weir’s technique may not be professional grade, and her tutu may be ripped and bloodied, but by the end of “Abigail,” her triumphant, unbridled dancing captures something true about why real ballet dancers love ballet.
Larsen said she wished more shows and movies would “show the physical exaltation that comes from having that kind of mastery, that ability to use your body like a fine-tuned instrument.”
“It is so sublime,” she added, “so freeing, so empowering.”
As Abigail pirouettes down the hallway after a victim, there it is, finally: A ballet dancer having fun onscreen.
