Playing the titular vampire ballerina in the upcoming horror movie Abigail, Alisha Weir gets to unleash a whole lot of carnage. The sweet-looking monster goes on a homicidal rampage when a group of criminals makes the mistake of kidnapping her (not knowing that she is a creature of the night), and the performance sees the young Irish actress sporting shark-like teeth and getting soaked in fake blood while flying around on wires. Despite the movie being targeted to more mature audiences, it was an on-set experience that Weir says was a great amount of fun… but there was one particular set that successfully freaked her out.
Last year, I joined a small group of journalists on a trip to Dublin, Ireland to visit the set of Abigail when it was still in production, and one bold sequence that the filmmakers and cast giddily teased involves a pool: rather than being filled with chlorinated water, this particular pool is filled to the brim with blood, organs, and body parts (you can see some of it in the first Abigail trailer). Alisha Weir wasn’t on set to discuss the sequence the days we were there, but I asked her about it last month during a virtual roundtable where she was paired with co-star Melissa Barrera. Said Weir,
I really wanted to do a horror film because I was always so intrigued and interested: Was it really scary on set? I'd be sitting at home and I have to convince myself most of the time that it's not actually real, so I always wanted to know if they were actually scared filming it. But to be honest, it was all fun except for when I’d seen the set and especially the pool with all the bodies in it.
Greater context for the existence of The Pool in Abigail was not offered, but I can certainly offer up some guesses regarding its purpose. It’s perhaps a food storage supply for when victims aren’t available… or maybe it’s for recreational purposes a la Scrooge McDuck and his vault of gold.
Continuing, Alisha Weir added that she doesn’t have any particular issue seeing blood, but the sheer carnage on display was one step over the line. Not only that, but it freaked out members of her family as well:
That really, I was like, 'No.' I'm not bad with blood. I don't mind it. There's so much blood in this, and I'm not that kind of like... I don't not like looking at it, but seeing the bodies in the pool, that was so gross and that was really, really freaky. And my mom was there too and she couldn't look at it. And when my sister was watching the film with us, she had to turn her head and she goes like, 'Just tell me when it's over.' She could not watch it at all. She was like, 'Just tell me when it's over.' But that definitely freaked me out and definitely threw me.
For horror fans, The Pool is just one of the many reasons to be excited for the upcoming film, which is the latest feature from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett – the directors of Scream, Scream VI, and Ready Or Not. In addition to the aforementioned Melissa Barrera and Alisha Weir, the blood-drenched vampire feature also stars Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, and Giancarlo Esposito. Look for Abigail in theaters everywhere on April 19, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more from my interviews with the movie’s cast and filmmakers.
