If you always thought your garden-variety heist movies could do with a bit more blood-sucking vampire, have we got a flick for you.

“Abigail,” featuring a 12-year-old tutu-wearing member of the undead, is way better than it should be, a gleeful genre-smashing romp through puddles of gore.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and producer Chad Villella — part of Radio Silence Productions — have cracked the modern horror code with such hits as “Ready or Not,” “Scream” and “Scream VI.” They do not disappoint with “Abigail,” even perhaps opening a new, bloody revenue stream. (And wait for the phone call scene, a nod to “Scream.”)

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“Abigail” starts with an odd assortment of mercenaries — played by “Scream” veteran Melissa Barrera, “Downton Abbey” star Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, William Catlett and the late Angus Cloud.

The six — representing the muscle, sniper, computer expert, getaway driver, medic etc — are hired to kidnap a rich preteen (nicknamed “Tiny Dancer”) and hold her for ransom. The rules are: No names. No backstory. No grabass, which is a weird request, if we’re being honest. All this group needs to do is detain the target for 24 hours until rich dad pays $50 million in ransom.

Why are six professional underworld characters needed to snatch and detain a sweet preteen, still wearing her tutu? That’s easy: Not all of them are going to survive to claim their share of $7 million. That’s because Abigail (Alisha Weir, awesome, stay away from me, no seriously) is really into, well, neckwork.

“I’m sorry about what’s going to happen to you,” Abigail sweetly tells the kidnappers. We have some idea — and it’s going to be great. Suddenly, the rambling estate they’re holding her becomes a prison. The tables are turned.

The script written by Stephen Shields (“The Hole in the Ground”) and regular Radio Silence collaborator Guy Busick (“Ready or Not” and the “Scream” movies) — gleefully mines humor in the horror. Laughing a moment after a body fully explodes is normal here.

“This whole thing is a trip,” says one of the gang. Believe them. “Something doesn’t add up,” says another. Believe that guy, too.

Garlic, sunlight, spears and crucifixes are employed to try to stop Abigail, who has hijacked the heist movie and turned it into a run-for-your-life thriller. She’s a very smart 12-year-old who turns hardened mercenaries against each other.

Barrera, who had been so central to the life of the “Scream” franchise, shows why she’s so good at horror — funny, sarcastic, vulnerable, athletic, soulful and very convincing with a stake in her hand.

Stevens, who famously left the aristocratic “Downton Abbey” for better roles, may wonder what he’s doing here now, bathed in blood fighting a preteen vampire, but does an admirable job, definitely in on the camp.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

It’s the dawn of a new era — a new Taylor Swift Era, that is.

This week, the 14-time Grammy Award-winning artist will release her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which she first announced at the Grammys in February.

While accepting the pop vocal album award for “Midnights” — her first of two wins that night — Swift thanked her fans by divulging “a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19.”

The announcement came as a shock to Swifties, who had theorized that the singer would instead announce “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” at the awards ceremony. (That the albums seem to share a B&W aesthetic didn’t help).

And while she may have intentionally thrown fans off the scent, “All’s fair in love and poetry.” So here’s what we know so far:

When does ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ come out?

Following a whirlwind promotional week, “The Tortured Poets Department” will arrive at 9 p.m. Pacific on Thursday. Her “April 19” announcement in February was referring to the album’s East Coast ETA.

Swift began making the album directly after she turned in “Midnights,” and it took her about two years to complete, she said during her first Eras Tour show in Japan on Feb. 7.

“I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect — in my opinion when it’s good enough for you — I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it,” she told the crowd.

What genre is it?

In Target’s product description for “The Tortured Poets Department” vinyl, the album is classified as pop, but the singer herself has not indicated where the album lands with respect to genre.

Instead, the self-proclaimed “chairman of the Tortured Poets Department” has released successive batches of lyrics, including “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshine, / full eclipse” — posted on the day of the April 8 solar eclipse.

Still, clues about the album’s potential sonic characteristics may lie with two of its credited songwriters, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, who have each produced large swaths of Swift’s discography.

If the two producers’ generally dissimilar sounds — Dessner leans pastoral, and Antonoff, synthetic — both inflect the record, it could be anything from folk to indie pop.

How many songs? Any guest artists?

Swift revealed the track list for “The Tortured Poets Department” in a Feb. 5 Instagram post, listing the following 16 titles:

• “Fortnight” (feat. Post Malone)
• “The Tortured Poets Department”
• “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
• “Down Bad”
• “So Long, London”
• “But Daddy I Love Him”
• “Fresh Out the Slammer”
• “Florida!!!!” (feat. Florence + The Machine)
• “Guilty as Sin?”
• “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
• “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
• “loml”
• “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”
• “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
• “The Alchemy”
• “Clara Bow”

Additionally, there are four different confirmed editions of the album, each named after the bonus track it will include: “The Bolter,” “The Albatross,” “The Black Dog” and “The Manuscript.”

Post Malone and Florence and the Machine are also credited as songwriters on their respective tracks.

After the initial announcement at the Grammys, Swift was relatively quiet. In recent weeks, though, she’s gone back to her internet-breaking behavior.

It started with an Apple Music collaboration that saw Swift releasing five different playlists on the platform, each consisting of songs from her catalog and representing one of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The playlists were titled with track names and lyrics from “The Tortured Poets Department.”

Then, on Saturday, Apple Music marked the final countdown to the album with a digital scavenger hunt.

“A word a day til the @taylorswift13 album drops,” the music service wrote in its bio on X (formerly Twitter).

Soon after, fans discovered that the secret words were hidden within song lyrics on Apple Music. Thus far, they’ve parsed the words “hereby,” “conduct,” “this,” “post” and “we,” and while many have their theories, the meaning of the incomplete word jumble is still unknown.

The festivities have also moved offline, to Spotify’s “The Tortured Poets Department” library installation at the Grove in L.A., which debuted Tuesday and is open through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

“Fans will be able to explore a poetry library, highly curated to represent the new record,” the event description on the Grove’s website reads. “The shelves will be packed with books and visual surprises for fans to enjoy.”

Visitors also seem to be finding a number of Swift’s trademark Easter eggs throughout the installation, including an upside-down “So Long, London” title — which fans suspect is a nod to her year-ago breakup with British actor Joe Alwyn — and a clock set to 2.

The former visual also appeared in a video Swift posted Tuesday on Instagram. Captioned “The TTPD Timetable,” the cryptic clip guides viewers from a “Midnights”-style room into “The Tortured Poets Department,” where a wall calendar teases a Friday music video release.

How can I listen to the new album?

“The Tortured Poets Department” is available to pre-order (and pre-save on Spotify or Apple Music) on Swift’s website, and is currently being offered in vinyl, cassette, CD and digital album formats to be released April 19. It will also start streaming on that date — which for West Coasters means at 9 p.m. Pacific Thursday.

The four versions of the album are also available to pre-order on Swift’s website, but CD and vinyl versions of the album are also available at Target. Currently, there is no version of the album, digital or physical, that will contain all four bonus tracks.

A poignant cinematic exploration

By Adrian D. Mendizabal

Usmar Ismail’s recently restored “After the Curfew” revolves around a soldier returning to his former life in the bustling city of Bandung, Indonesia, only to find himself increasingly alienated by the American-influenced modernity prevalent there.

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Set in postwar Indonesia following the nation’s struggle for independence from Dutch colonizers (1945-1949), the film reflects the shaping of Indonesia’s contemporary historical and political landscape. This period also gave rise to significant global alliances, notably the Bandung Conference of 1955, uniting nations of the Global South against colonialism and neocolonialism, with the Philippines among the participating countries. Nationalist, democratic, and communist ideals proliferated in postwar Indonesian society, championed by figures like Sukarno, the leader of Indonesia’s anti-colonial movement against the Dutch. During this period, the sense of impending freedom was palpable, reflected in the mise-en-scene that portrays Indonesian society still steeped in revolutionary fervor but gradually embracing a more Westernized way of life.

At the heart of this societal shift is the protagonist/anti-hero, Iskandar, a former revolutionary soldier grappling with his newfound existence. Reuniting with his fiancée Norma, former comrades and acquaintances like the infrastructure developer Gafar, brothel owner Puja and his companion Laila, as well as his former military superior-turned-governor Gunawan, Iskandar navigates these encounters, attempting to reconcile his past with an uncertain future.

For Iskandar, the Indonesian nationalist revolution defines the true reality that everyone must experience. It constitutes the site of maximal change, the historical turning point of his nation that seemingly slips into ordinariness and oblivion when faced with Indonesian postwar contemporary life which seemingly forgets what happened to the struggle for independence.

Check also this interview

For Iskandar, the Indonesian nationalist revolution represents the ultimate reality that all must confront, a pivotal moment in his nation’s history. It constitutes the site of maximal change, the historical turning point of his nation that seemingly slips into ordinariness and oblivion when faced with Indonesian postwar contemporary life.

“After the Curfew” masterfully argues for the irreconcilability between the revolutions fought on the frontlines and the societal transformations that follow. Through Iskandar’s alienation and disillusionment, one sees the incomplete nature of such social revolutions. On a broader scale, it contends that true social revolution eludes postwar Indonesia, with the old order persisting and bourgeois values and feudal structure retaining their dominance. It subtly critiques American cultural imperialism, embodied in Laila’s aspiration for a more modern, Americanized lifestyle portrayed in magazines like LIFE.

In addition, the filmmaker posits that a revolution’s success hinges on its ability to fundamentally alter societal norms and behaviors, echoing Maoist principles in cultural revolution. In postwar Indonesia, as depicted in the motion picture, capitalism prevails, leaving revolutionaries like Iskandar disconnected from a society that fails to align with their ideals. It argues that the new American-influenced Indonesian society metaphorically extinguishes the revolutionary spirit, foreshadowing the tragic events of the 1966 CIA-backed communist purge, which claimed the lives of countless intellectuals and activists, further underscoring its central thesis.

In conclusion, “After the Curfew” stands as a poignant cinematic exploration of the complexities surrounding postwar Indonesia’s transition from revolutionary fervor to modernity. Through the lens of protagonist Iskandar’s alienation and disillusionment, Usmar Ismail skillfully examines the tension between the ideals of the nationalist revolution and the societal changes that ensued. With its nuanced portrayal of the struggle to reconcile past and present, coupled with its commentary on the enduring influence of imperialism and capitalism, what emerges is a thought-provoking reflection on the nature of social revolutions and their lasting impact on individual lives and collective consciousness.

This review first appeared in Omnitudo as part of The Big Continent: Asian Cinema Challenge.