Abigail Directors On How They Dealt With Angus Cloud's Death

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At the time of his death, Angus Cloud had completed work on Abigail. This stands as one of his final performances.

The makers of the vampire horror film Abigail had to deal with the death of cast member Angus Cloud soon after the film’s shooting concluded. Cloud passed away on July 31, 2023. The 25-year-old, best known for his role as Fez in Euphoria, died of an “accidental drug overdose.” Now his last film Abigail is set for release on April 19. Recently film directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett spoke to Comic Book about how they tried to honour Cloud’s memory as they pushed the film through post-production.

Bettinelli-Olipin described working on Abigail after Cloud’s death as “emotionally hard”. He added they “felt a responsibility” to make sure that they were using Cloud’s shots in the best way possible. The Scream director added, “We really, we mined the footage, we made sure that we looked for everything from him. If there was any moment that was kind of special, is there a way to use it, is there a way for us to get this in because in a lot of ways you could watch this movie and know that we took extra care to make sure that the Angus stuff all lived and we even put a lot of stuff on, you know, the behind the scenes stuff because he was always making everybody laugh and so he’s in a lot of jokes. It’s just as much as we can do with this movie to help keep his memory alive.” The film is dedicated to Cloud.

Abigail is about a group of experienced kidnappers who find themselves trapped with a vampire child named Abigail, who is posing as the daughter of a powerful underworld figure. The kidnappers expect a $50 million ransom for Abigail but are forced to fight for their lives as Abigail hunts them one by one. In addition to Cloud, the film stars Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett and Kevin Durand as the kidnappers. It has child actor Alisha Weir as Abigail. The movie is a reimagining of the 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter.

Abigail had its world premiere at the Overlook Film Festival on April 7, 2024. So far its critic reviews are positive. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an average rating of 7.7/10 based on 28 critic reviews.