Abigail (Tinatin Dalakishvili) has grown up in a city surrounded by a thick border constructed to keep a mysterious illness at bay… an illness so severe that if you show any signs of having it the government just hauls your ass away (as they did with Abigail’s own father).
The problem with this is, the disease doesn’t exist. In fact, Abigail’s city has been overtaken by dark magic users who have attempted to erase all knowledge of magic in a city once full of it, and dig this; the people hauled away are those suspected of being able to possess magic ability.
This of course sets Abigail off on a journey to find her father while learning to control her own burgeoning magical abilities while becoming a hero to the downtrodden… all in a days work for our scrappy heroine!
The first thing you will doubtless notice about Abigail is that this film is absolutely a visual wonder. Every detail of this steampunk sandwiched with the 1920’s with a dash of fairy tale world is so beautifully realized that I found myself getting lost in every sumptuous detail… and that’s not to say the narrative isn’t arresting as well, as it most surely is!
Every bit the match for the set and production design is the films unique mythology and world building. You have the visual madness mentioned up yonder, deftly combined with magic, airships, metal-masked gendarmes, rebellions, double-crosses, evil comic book villain style plots, fairies… it seems like a lot to cram into one film that runs just under two hours… and it is… but co-writer (along with Dmitriy Zhigalov)/director Aleksandr Boguslavskiy keeps things fast paced but never confusing or seemingly cluttered no matter how many imaginative ideas come flying our way!
While the world of the film is expertly realized, the heavy lifting in selling this universe is going to rest on the actors that have to inhabit it, and the cast here is truly game, with Dalakishvili making for a fantastically plucky protagonist who seems equal parts Shelly DuVall and Molly Ringwald, and with all of the charm and quirk that entails!
As fantastic as the feature is, the bonus features on this Blu-ray release from Well Go USA are ultra-sparse, as only the film’s trailer (as well as those of other Well Go releases) is featured.
Full of imagination, impressive visuals, and possessing an epic narrative; Abigail will definitely be right up the alley of lovers of steampunk as well as fans of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy video games, and is a grand cinematic adventure indeed!
