Abigail And Cheering For The Vampire

By Cynthia Sax on July 10, 2026

Spoiler Alert – This post will talk about the movie Abigail and it WILL contain spoilers. If you haven’t yet watched this delightful vampire horror movie, you might wish to skip this post.

I am NOT a horror fan. I get a little too scared for my enjoyment. But I AM a vampire fan so, with the Dear Wonderful Hubby to protect me, I summoned my courage and watched Abigail.

We both really enjoyed it.

Yes, it had a lot of jump scares. And there was quite a bit of gore.

But I was more intrigued about the mystery involved in this movie and enthralled by the child vampire to be terrified out of my mind.

I was cheering for this child vampire.

She was originally framed as the baddie but EVERYONE involved were baddies.

There were no innocents or truly good characters in the bunch. Heck, they kidnapped a CHILD. That’s how terrible these people were.

And that Abigail was a child meant we naturally wanted to protect her.

She was also the victim of a crime (kidnapping).

And she was alone.

All of this created a baddie I could cheer for.

Which REALLY worked for the plot. And with the happy-for-a-horror-movie ending.

Abigail is a master class in creating a sympathetic villain.

And it is dang good vampire movie.

(smiles)

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Atlas And Super Attractive And Sympathetic Villains

By Cynthia Sax on March 6, 2026

Spoiler Alert – This post will talk about Atlas and it WILL contain spoilers. If you haven’t yet watched this SciFi Action movie, you might wish to skip this post.

The Dear Wonderful Hubby and I watched Atlas, a SciFi movie featuring a human heroine and an AI mech body suit with his own personality.

I wouldn’t watch it again but it was entertaining.

The Dear Wonderful Hubby’s favorite part was when the heroine admitted to not liking anyone, saying that people just disappoint. He teased me that the heroine sounded like me.

(grins)

My biggest issue with Atlas is…

The villain is ridiculously sexy. Simu Liu is hot as he is but they gave him cyborg eyes and… (bites fist). My stars. I wanted to lick the screen.

His motivations are also understandable. Humans are f*cking up the world, creating misery and killing all other species. He wants to reduce the human population and put AI in charge to curb our rather violent tendencies. Which…well…it isn’t a bad long term plan for the planet.

This combination caused me to be conflicted. While I didn’t cheer for the villain, I also didn’t want him hurt or defeated. I definitely didn’t want him killed. My ideal resolution is he is sent to a planet where he can build more of his kind, protect the locals (likely from species like us), and find some sort of peace.

Yes, I’ve rewritten the ending in my brain. I wasn’t happy with the one provided.

The lesson here is…

Don’t create a villain your audience or reader doesn’t want to see defeated.

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