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ABIGAIL is a new horror/thriller from director Melissa Vitello, and writer Gunnar Garrett. Starring Ava Cantrell, Tren Reed-Brown, Hermione Lynch, and Karimah Westbrook, the film promises quirky violence when a teenaged girl with a shady past moves to a new town with her mom, befriending her bullied neighbor. Of course, things take a violent turn, leaving the neighbor with a difficult choice.
We recently had the chance to chat with Melissa Vitello about the film, and she gave us some awesome insight into the making of it! Bullies beware!
iHorror: Hi Melissa! What can you tell us about the film, ABIGAIL? Without spoiling too much, of course!
Melissa Vitello: ABIGAIL is about a young girl who is moving to a new place with her mom to get away from something that we don’t know about, some past trauma. She moves to a small town in Alabama and befriends the boy next door, who is about her age. She comes to find that he is being bullied in school, and he hasn’t really been dealt the greatest hand in life. His mom is abusive to him. She takes him under her wing and starts standing up for him, and telling him to defend himself. It gets pushed a little further, and becomes a little more insidious, once he finds out that Abigail is a serial killer, and he’s put in the middle with a decision to make about what kind of life to choose.
What attracted you to the project?
I’m such a fan, and such a nerd of all things CW. I spent so many years watching, and rewatching The Vampire Diaries, and Gossip Girl, shows like that. So, I love drama, action, teen fiction, and horror. I like that it had a kind of a quirky violent side to it, sort of Tarantino-esque sort of vibe to it. He’s one of my favorite directors so I was excited to jump in and play with that energy a bit.
The film stars Ava Cantrell, Tren Reed-Brown, Hermione Lynch, and Karimah Westbrook. What was it like all working together?
It was great! Ava and have worked together before. We actually did a short film before this project, and she’s great. She’s a great collaborator. It was fun with Abigail because we decided kind of early on if Abigail was just a bad kid, or a sociopath, and decided, no – she’s a sociopath. Every decision she makes is calculated and she’s not your average, perky, teenaged girl. She doesn’t understand that, or know how to be that, but she’s very observant of what she needs to do to come off that way, and appear normal. We had a lot of really cool discussions around that.
Same with Tren. I want to say it was his first acting gig. I think he’s been in a few smaller things, but this was his first feature. He was so excited, and so talented. He so wanted to bring out the emotional side of Lucas, and how he related to Abigail. There’s a lot to dissect, and Tren had a lot of fun doing that.
Where did you guys film, and how long did it take?
We filmed in Oakdale, CA. Which is where the writer lives.
What’s one thing that stood apart about directing this film?
This was, I think, the biggest project I had taken on, and there were a lot of moving parts. It was mostly night shoots. We had, like, 10 days of night shoots. Very challenging, but most of the film is outdoors, at night. So we had to keep everybody happy, awake and alert. It was a really big thing to take on. I think it tested everybody’s sanity a little bit. I loved the experience of directing this. I loved really peeling back the layers of these characters, and finding the right shots, and the right angles to tell the story.
You’re a producer, you’re a director, but you also write?
I do.
Of the three roles, which do you prefer?
They’re all so different. I feel like I find myself in writing. That’s how I communicate emotionally. I love being able to sit for hours and dive into a story, and figure out how to create an arc. But, directing is so exciting. To actually bring your story to life, there’s nothing like getting on set those first couple of days and seeing it all happen. It’s just so surreal. That’s the magic of film making. As far as producing, I love being able to help artists actualize their vision. I’m such a nerd, but I love the logistical side. Me and my producing partner will hit a spreadsheet – so hard. We love spreadsheets, and organizing plans. It’s a hard question, because they’re all such a huge part of my life.
If you had to sell me the movie in one epic sentence, what would you say? Run on sentences permitted.
I’d say 1970s Alabama, a young girl moves to a small town to start over with her mom and becomes fascinated with the boy next door and they develop a relationship. Upon going deeper, he realizes she’s a serial killer and he has to make a decision between an abusive life, or the love and kindness of a serial killer.
What would you say your biggest influence was growing up? In respect to making movies?
I would probably say the Sixth Sense. M. Night Shyamalan. Because I remember the first time I saw it. I was always into Hitchcock, and dark fantasy, Never Ending Story, and Willow, and some darker, weirder stuff when I was a teenager. I always loved writing. I was always telling stories. When I saw The Sixth Sense it changed the way that I saw storytelling. The way that the movie got me so good at the end. I remember watching with my family, and at the end, all of us just started flipping out at the twist. I just didn’t realize you could do that with movies! You can just trick people like that. It was so profound to me the way the answer was in front of you the whole time, you just couldn’t see it. That really got me excited about how to explore storytelling.
Okay, so being a genre fan, if you could dive in and remake any horror movie – what would you pick.
I think I would say the old Haunting movie. I think it was back in the 50s. They remade it, but it was terrible. The original was terrifying. I was so afraid while watching it, and nothing happened. It could be all in this woman’s head, I loved that about the movie. She’s seeing things, but you’re not seeing the things that she’s seeing, and other people are being terrified by her reaction to these things that could be real, or not. The whole thing is so psychological, and so well done. I love paranormal stuff. I think I would like to remake that, and see if I could do something as terrifying, but in a modern setting.
Anything else that you wanted to mention, Melissa?
I am working on something new. I’m in development on my next script that I’ll hopefully be directing next year. It’s a paranormal horror film about past life regression hypnotherapy. It’s about these kids who lose one of their friends and find out that she was doing past life regression, and opened a portal to their past lives, and who they were to each other in the past. In order to close that and stop the haunting they have to figure out who they were to each other, and heal these relationships that are falling apart. Very excited about that. It’s called Regression.
We’ll definitely be keeping an ear out for more info on that! Thank you so much for your time, Melissa!
Thank you!
Be sure to check out ABIGAIL! Available now on VOD, courtesy of Dark Star Pictures!