Melissa Barrera Is Stepping Into Her Scream Queen Power With Abigail

Abigail is “a perfect gateway movie into the horror genre,” according to its star Melissa Barrera. And she should know — she’s become the reigning queen of the genre, headlining a range of titles from the corporate blockbusters Scream V and Scream IV to her independently produced Bed Rest to this year’s Sundance charmer Your Monster.

In Abigail, she’s part of a group of criminals who kidnap a 12-year-old ballerina, taking her to an isolated mansion-slash-safe house to wait for ransom. Things go south and fans of gore, jump scares, and psychological drama will surely be pleased.

In horror films, Barrera usually plays the lone survivor, or “final girl” to use the genre’s parlance. You know the type, walking away triumphantly at the end, covered in blood and dirt but alive and free. “I love playing characters that are warriors — strong women that no matter all the obstacles that get thrown at them, they find a way to survive,” Barrera tells Refinery29 Somos over Zoom. She calls those last shots, “the opposite of the walk of shame, the walk of glory.”

“For women watching, I hope that they feel empowered,” she shares. “When I meet fans or when I see people online talking about it, they really see themselves in these women. And I think it's because women in the world get put through so much. … We're expected to do all sorts of things and also live up to whatever expectations men have of us. It's a lot.”

It’s easy to understand why Barrera is done with other people’s expectations — and why she empathizes with her badass, fighter characters. Late last year, she made headlines for being fired from the Scream franchise, despite her Scream VI setting global box office records. And why was she let go? The people at Spyglass, who make the series, didn’t like Barrera’s calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict, which has claimed the lives of more than 33,000 Palestinians and 1,139 Israelis. For this, Spyglass accused Barrera of being antisemitic. Instead of letting the news-making discharge silence her, Barrera hasn’t backed down, writing in an Instagram post about the incident. “I pray day and night for no more deaths, for no more violence, and for peaceful co-existence. I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Silence is not an option for me.”

Now, when asked about what happened with Scream, she says, “being a woman already puts a lot of hurdles in the industry, but also being a woman of color, it's even more. We're definitely seen as disposable. By a lot of people, we’re seen as a box that they have to check.”

Barrera isn’t letting that dismissive attitude stop her. “In the industry, there are very few spaces that are designated for us. So we have to fight for more — not just fight within ourselves to get the few opportunities that they give us, but fight for more spaces,” she explains. “That's why I usually go for roles that are not necessarily written for someone like me, because I know that if I get that space for me, then I can open that door.” And when she succeeds in flipping a character that wasn’t originally written as Latina, a cascade of representation can occur: “If my character has family, they're going to cast them as Latino. If you have a creative that is interested in authentic representation, then they'll hire writers that know the background, that are Latino to authenticate the script. So it just creates more opportunities and that's what I'm focused on.”

Of course, the problem with representation is not just casting and the writing (or not) of dedicated Latine parts — there’s an industry culture of devaluing our perspectives, which leads to worse art. “I see a difference when you let creatives create from their own brain, versus when you have gatekeepers, allowing someone to create, but always having an opinion about it,” says Barrera. “Because of those gatekeepers that are the ones that greenlight things and give the money to filmmakers to make films, I think we self-filter. Sometimes as a community, we fall into stereotypical Latino things. That is not necessarily the kind of representation we want, but we know that that's what they want from us.”

Still, she’s hopeful. “I think the industry and the audience worldwide is getting tired of seeing the same thing over and over and over. And we're starting to see the effects of it actually in the box office and in views online. We're starting to see people gravitate toward original content. And so hopefully that'll light the bulbs in people's brains to be like, ‘all right,, let's give new filmmakers opportunities. Let's go for original stories as opposed to just rebooting things that we've seen before, telling the same old story.’”

This is exactly what Barrera is doing with Abigail. Yes, the film draws on classic horror tropes, but it has fun with them, making them fresh and surprising. And part of that is the casting of Barrera herself — it does feel new to watch a Latina woman triumph, complete the hero’s arc, and go on and thrive. And if industry leaders and gatekeepers see our stars and our community as disposable, well, that won’t stop us. We’ll go watch them in something else. And we’ll take our time, talent, and money with us.