Abigail Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Abigail Blu-ray Movie Review

Harriet Potter and the Fake News Global Pandemic.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 9, 2020

Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor? It may be an extremely dark sense of humor, mind you, but is there any other way to account for the fact that Abigail, a film ostensibly about a pandemic and a population’s panicked reaction to it, including lots of fears about infection and a government urging calm while also instituting pretty drastic quarantining measures, should show up in my review queue at more or less the exact same time as the coronavirus story has become an inescapable worldwide phenomenon? That said, the whole “sickness” angle in this film is couched within an overall context of people with supposedly “dangerous” magical powers having to go underground in order to survive, in just the latest reworking of at least some ideas found in the venerable Harry Potter series. The first thing American viewers may notice about this effort is that the credits feature a rather long string of names which are unknown and in many cases rather exotic looking, something that may subliminally point to the fact that this is a Russian effort. That said, the IMDb lists New York as a filming location, and it seems (based on lip movements) that many of the actors were speaking English during the actual shoot (including the one actor whose name many westerners will recognize, Eddie Marsan). That said, the dialogue in this film often sounds like something spurted out by an online language to language translator which frankly may have still been in a beta testing phase, by which I mean it frequently is unintentionally laughable and often comes close to make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Abigail perhaps cheekily refers to a current debate in the American body politic by positing a bunch of sequences which are defined by how long after the construction of a large wall (actually called a "border") isolating Abigail’s community they take place. The city within the wall is another of those Brazil inspired production designs that emphasizes old fashioned cars and other accoutrements. The film has a subtext that emphasizes different timeframes, and a lot of the material featuring Marsan plays out as supposed honey colored flashbacks (though they may not in fact actually be "flashbacks" as they're traditionally though of) of Abigail as a child interacting with her father (played by Marsan). It’s quickly detailed how some kind of ostensible illness has devastated the population, and the only way the city’s citizens are kept safe are by a marauding set of weirdly costumed enforcers (who look like they've stumbled into this film from a nearby production of The Rocketeer) who can scan a person’s eye to figure out if they’ve been “infected”. In just one of many scenes which are just kind of plopped down and never adequately explained, Abigail’s father is ultimately taken away as a supposed infected person, but plenty of hints are dropped that (of course) something else is actually going on.

There's little question almost from the get go that this supposed "illness" may be a creation of the nefarious governmental forces lurking in the background (and occasionally spilling out into the foreground), but the screenplay here just kind of lurches from scene to scene, often seeming to pick up things almost randomly in medias res, which often leads to a feeling that something got "lost in translation" along the way. There are all sorts of curious elisions here that fail to provide adequate context for a number of characters and even frankly what's ultimately revealed to be going on vis a vis Abigail and a number of other magically powered beings.

In terms of the production design, the back cover of this release references the film offering “a magical steampunk adventure”, and in that regard there is a kind of steampunk influenced production design that some may find appealing, including a kind of cool flying fortress (for want of a better description — see screenshot 2). But the underlying tale, while often handsome to watch, never really delivers on the almost inherently quaint aspects of what I’d call “traditional steampunk” outings. This is yet another story that features a heroine who slowly becomes aware of her “true self”, thereby empowering her. The film might have done better to have hewed to that hoary but probably still very effective foundational premise, rather than darting off into various nooks and crannies of a really fractured narrative.

Abigail Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Abigail is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. There doesn't seem to be much online data available about this shoot (including at the IMDb), so I can't speak to what camera was used or what resolution the DI may have been. That said, allowing for what is kind of a traditional softness to some of the CGI, and some intermittently wobbly contrast that can make some scenes look fairly hazy, this is a rather sharp and appealing looking transfer, though there are some deficits in shadow detail in some of the blue graded material in particular. A lot of the ostensible flashback material featuring Marsan as Abigail's father is almost sepia toned at times, and can look quite evocative with an emphasis on yellows and browns that pop surprisingly well. The "current day" material can tend to be just a bit tamped down in terms of the palette, at least when the "non magical" world is on display. Fine detail in some of these scenes is good enough that elements like obviously fake beards become even more obvious. There are little pops of color throughout, like the magical "Tinkerbell" like character who is rendered in some appealing blue tones.

Abigail Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Abigail features an effective DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that derives some enjoyable surround activity from the bustling street activities that Abigail wanders through. Some of the scenes featuring the young Abigail and her dad also have nicely placed if at times pretty subtle ambient environmental sounds dotting the surround channels. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly throughout the track, and I noticed no issues whatsoever with regard to distortion, dropouts or other damage.

Abigail Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:32)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, this sole supplement has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Abigail Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I frequently use the "deck" (the little subtitle under the review title) to make a silly joke, and this is now the second "Harriet Potter" reference I've made in the last couple of weeks, after my relatively recent A Discovery of Witches Blu-ray review. The "retro" qualities of Abigail are probably more in line with the slightly Edwardian feel of much of the Harry Potter franchise than the much more contemporary looking A Discovery of Witches, but in many other ways this extremely odd entry fails to really work up much real cinematic magic. There are some interesting elements to this tale, and some of the visuals are engaging, but without seeming too churlish maybe someone with a better ear for natural sounding English should have handled the dialogue. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.