The Predator formula is a winning one, but it feels like it’s been a little while since we’ve seen it. Probably not since Prey, really. The idea of starting out in one genre and then switching to horror when the Predator shows up is a really potent one, and it’s deployed to great effect in Abigail.

Here we have a group of hardened criminals, whose on-the-job monikers are borrowed from of the Rat Pack, kidnapping a little girl with a very wealthy father so they can claim a huge ransom. All goes smoothly until they get her to their hideout… where they discover that she’s a vampire who wants to eat them.

ittedly, these aren’t the unstoppable badasses of Predator. They’re very good at what they do, but they’re more dysfunctional and overtly quirky. We get a quick rundown of their personalities early on courtesy of Joey’s (Melissa Barrera) knack for reading people, and they’re a broadly drawn but memorable and engaging bunch. Joey is the closest thing to a “straight man”, the anchor on whom all the craziness depends; Dan Stevens is having a ball as Frank, the group’s leader and a nasty piece of work; and Kathryn Newton continues her horror hot streak as Sammy, a teenage runaway hacker.

It’s Alisha Weir as Abigail herself who, quite rightly, makes the biggest impression though. Switching on a dime from scared little girl to terrifying predator, she’s a fiercely compelling presence and manages to keep our sympathies even when she’s dead set upon slaughtering everyone else in the movie. It would be a crying shame if she doesn’t do more horror after this; someone put her and Mia Goth in a movie together and let’s watch the sparks fly.

Weir makes the titular character a terrific movie monster, but it does have to be said that Abigail the movie is very rarely truly frightening. It manages to get us wincing and squirming when people’s necks are getting torn out, and there’s the occasional effective jump scare, but it’s firmly in the “fun horror” camp. That’s ok, though! It knows exactly what tone it’s going for and sticks to it, and the characters’ acid-sniping at one another never stops being funny even when there’s a vampire hot on their heels.

It’s not distracting the way quippy dialogue often can be, and it fits well with the tone that the outrageous amounts of gore establish. At the end of the day, this is a splatter movie, with more than one character bursting in a gigantic shower of blood and viscera, and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett never lose sight of that. Some might say that makes the movie a one-trick pony; it’s more accurate to say that it knows what it is and is totally unashamed about it. Maybe it’s not a terribly ambitious movie, but it’s hard to care when the characters, kills and carnage are as fun as they are here.

At the screening this writer attended, there was the distinct sound of a member of the audience vomiting during one particularly gruesome moment, and we can surely all agree that the movie must be doing something right if it’s having that kind of effect. Abigail is, fundamentally, a fairly silly movie, but it’s the good kind of silly: heaps of fun and an absolute blast with a game audience. Pulpy, lurid, extravagantly bloody, and enormously entertaining.