Dolls don’t scare me.
The H-Bomb: Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton) are a perfect Barbie doll couple living in 1960’s southern California. She is several months pregnant with her first child, and as a gift, John buys her a brand new doll to put in the kid’s nursery. This doll sports a demonic grin and is just about the ugliest fucking thing you ever did see, and any mother who would put it in a newborn’s nursery should have her head examined, but nevertheless, that’s what Mia does.
Later that night, Mia and John’s friendly middle-aged neighbors are brutally redrummed next door, and the killers, a man and a woman, then come into their house and savagely attack them. The police intervene and shoot the psychotic duo dead, and as the female attacker is dying, she holds the creepy little demon doll in her arms. A traumatized Mia can no longer stand the sight of the doll, and John chucks it in the trash.
Days later, Mia is home alone when a fire mysteriously starts, nearly killing her. Sensing that there is some kind of presence in her home, she begs John to move, and shorty after the baby, Lea, is born, they do exactly that, relocating to an apartment building. Believing that she has left all her troubles behind, Mia is ready to start her perfect new life with her perfect husband and perfect baby. Then, as she’s unpacking, she finds, smiling up at her, at the bottom of the very last box, the creepy little demon doll.
Suffice it to say, Mia’s troubles have only just begun.
Considering that Annabelle is a totally contrived, cash grab spin-off, it could’ve been worse. I went into this prequel to The Conjuring with fairly low expectations, and bear in mind, I absolutely loved The Conjuring, as it was one of the very few horror films that I found scary as an adult. And I wasn’t the only one, as it managed to conjure up some big bucks at the box office. Of course Hollywood, being Hollywood, just had to find a way to capitalize and cash in, and I tried to go in with an open mind, as always, but the trailers looked so lame, and so generic, that I didn’t have high hopes.
This is why I am somewhat pleasantly surprised that Annabelle didn’t entirely suck. Mind you, it is far inferior to The Conjuring, and not nearly as frightening, but all things considered, it could have been worse. Even though the Annabelle doll and its sinister grin are what people tend to immediately remember from The Conjuring, it in actuality had very little to do with the central story of that film, and for me, the doll was not even close to being the scariest aspect of it. In fact, dolls never really bothered me, at all. I know many people are creeped out by dolls, I’m just not one of them. Clowns, I find fucking terrifying, dolls… not so much.
So, aside from being centered around a figure that I, frankly, do not find that scary, another knock against Annabelle is that it’s not directed by James Wan. Wan is a filmmaker who understands the genre and knows how to scare an audience, and this film really could have used his distinct talents. Instead, Annabelle comes to us from the director of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (just let that sink in), John R. Leonetti, who seems to think that loud equals scary. Lacking Wan’s ability to build dread and truly get under our skin, Leonetti instead jam packs this thing with jumping jolt scares from beginning to end. I will say this for them, they are at times effective, and at least they’re not fake-out jump scares, but they don’t leave a long enough impression to really unnerve us, and the best one is actually featured in the trailer.
While Leonetti is clearly not on Wan’s level, I will give him credit for crafting one incredible sequence, set in an elevator, that is legitimately frightening. I would put it up there with the hide n’ clap basement scene from The Conjuring. It is one terrifyingly terrific sequence. Sadly, the rest of the film is far less inspired, filled with such familiar genre staples as the kindly old priest, the wise old mystic woman, and the clueless cop. The characters in The Conjuring came off as real people, who had lives before and after the events of that movie. Here, we get a bunch of two dimensional stock characters who exist for the sole purpose of providing exposition. Even the leading couple seems underdeveloped, and fails to elicit much sympathy.
The actors do fine with these pathetically underwritten characters, with the ironically named Annabelle Wallis delivering an impressively stellar lead turn, the film just never gave me a reason to give a damn about her or any of the others. I was only truly invested when the baby was in danger, and that was because it was a baby that was in danger… which is kind of manipulative. For the rest of the time, I didn’t care all that much. It came off as a half-hearted mix between Rosemary’s Baby and Insidious… complete with an utterly ridiculous demon creature that is sure to inspire chuckles instead of terror.
That’s about all there is to say about Annabelle. It’s not bad, just incredibly average. On it’s own, it’s perfectly okay, and certainly has its spooky moments, but when compared to the uber-creepy Conjuring, holy crap almighty does it suffer. There in lies the catch-22; if Annabelle wasn’t selling itself as a prequel to The Conjuring, it probably would’ve gone straight to DVD. And DVD is really the way to go with this one, because one great elevator scene and a butt-load of boo scares do not warrant a trip to the theater, even in October.
