With both being released to streaming, I finally got around to seeing two horror films I told you about when their trailers were first released. Abigail hit theaters in April, while the indie film The Beast Within starring Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) made it to the big screen in July.

So, what was the final verdict?

Yes, for one, and a great big no for the other – and you may be surprised which was which.

Here’s the synopsis that was released with Beast’s trailer.

After a series of strange events lead her to question her family’s isolated life on a fortified compound deep in the English wilds, 10-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall) follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of the ancient forest. But upon witnessing her father (Harington) undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret they’ve tried so desperately to conceal.

Beast seemed to have a lot of things going for it. It was touted for its practical effects and atmospheric storytelling when it did the indie film festival circuit earlier this year. A small-budget outing with an A-list star like Harington, seemed to imply Harington did the movie because he loved the material rather than for the payday. Plus, the trailer sure made this new take on a werewolf tale look intriguing.

Well… not so much.

It is so incredibly frustrating when a story with a ton of potential just rolls over and dies. Though the trailer implied a suspenseful, cohesive tale, Beast was a rambling affair that didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be. Was Harington’s character a loving father or an abusive a-hole (the whole werewolf thing aside)? Was his long-suffering wife the ultimate caregiver or a dangerous co-dependent who was endangering her daughter? Any sympathy we might have felt for any of these characters was crushed by the rambling, knee-jerking series of events that barely held together as a story.

Harington as a werewolf just added to the confusion, and what I thought from the trailer would be an ending that would see the family’s daughter inherit her father’s wolfy tendencies, fell flat into an ending that went right off a cliff. Even some of the scenes from the trailer apparently ended up on the cutting room floor.

Needless to say, I wasn’t a bit surprised when I learned the film pulled a very anemic $52k from its time at the box office, making it an unqualified dud. I was wrong – a naked Kit Harington in a dog collar can’t prop up an entire film.

It’s streaming now on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu, but don’t bother.

Abigail on the other hand, surprised the heck out of me in a good way. Here’s the synopsis that came out with the trailer:

After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.

Yes, the trailer gave away the fact that the adorable ballerina we see kidnapped by a band of thugs, was really a tiny vampire. But this didn’t stop Abigail from being full of surprises.

In a story that could have easily been riddled with tropes and predictability, it was instead surprisingly 3D and full of twists. All I kept thinking while watching Abigail was how much fun 15-year-old star Alisha Weir must have been having filming some of those scenes. She is what really made the film so entertaining as we watch her go from frightened kidnap victim to vicious monster, eating her way through the bad guys. Even the ending was satisfyingly out of the ordinary, confirming it is indeed possible to do something new with vampires.

Making $42M on a budget of $28M doesn’t make Abigail a success by Hollywood standards, but it sure was fun to watch. You can stream it now on Google Play, Amazon and AppleTV.