A couple of points to start: 1. It’s very odd that I’ve seen back-to-back evil doll movies with Child’s Play and now the new Annabelle. 2. After watching this, I realize that I was far too harsh on the new Child’s Play. If revealing that nothing, not a goddamn thing, happens in this movie is considered a spoiler, then spoiler alert.
I’m running out of ways to describe how goddamn boring these movies are, but I’ll try this: Back in 2016, I went to see a shitty horror movie called The Darkness. It’s an awful Poltergeist ripoff starring Kevin Bacon that was notable because it was the only horror movie that I could think of where nobody died. Obviously, that is a record that can’t be broken, but Annabelle Comes Home has tied it. Not only does nobody die, nobody even gets fucking hurt. I think that somebody in The Darkness at least got bitten by a frigging dog. This movie is almost remarkable in how inconsequential it is. I have found all of these movies boring, but this is an entirely new level. This film plumbs the depths of boredom like a mental experiment designed by a madman.
After two prequels, we finally pick back up at the point where the Warrens took ownership of the Annabelle doll and locked it up along with all of their other evil artifacts. They have to go out of town, so they hire a babysitter to look after their daughter. A friend of the babysitter shows up and, being a fucking idiot, she goes into the evil-artifact room in hopes of communicating with her dead father. Not sure why she thinks that a room full of demonic antiques is an optimal spot for that, but what the hell. Of course, she releases the Annabelle doll and Annabelle starts unleashing the other spirits contained in the room. Since the three girls have forgotten that houses have fucking doors that enable you to leave, they are stuck dealing with the resulting ghost prison break.
I’ll admit, despite my disinterest in the previous movies, I thought that this was a cool idea. The most common plot comparison that I’ve heard is that this is a horror version of Night at the Museum, but I was thinking it would be like an episode of Ghostbusters where the ghosts get broken out of the containment unit. But you know what this actually is? It’s the goddamn Goosebumps movie. Annabelle is Slappy and the artifacts are the Goosebumps books. I thought that the Goosebumps movie was too fucking tame, and that was a PG adaptation of a series of children’s books. Annabelle Comes Home is a children’s film that has somehow been released as an R-rated horror film. Did some kind of mixup happen and Toy Story 4 contains a shocking amount of gore and violence? Are there children in a theater somewhere crying because they just watched Woody and Buzz Lightyear get butchered? Fuck, I hope so. At least then there would be some kind of point to this.
The movie doesn’t even do much with the core concept. All of these Conjuring movies act as demos for other monsters that could potentially get their own movies, so Annabelle Comes Home would seem to be a goldmine of potential future movies. That’s not really true because we only see three other ghosts/monsters: a killer bride, a hellhound/werewolf and the ferryman (the guy that you have to pay to get across the river Styx in the afterlife if you can’t sing Come Sail Away). We don’t get any real information about any of them and they only have relatively brief appearances, so they are largely wasted opportunities. And, as I have said in previous reviews, the Annabelle doll is a waste because the doll itself doesn’t do anything. It is just haunted by a generic-looking demon that we occasionally see for a couple of seconds. The fact that it’s a doll is completely irrelevant. It could be a haunted lamp and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Maybe if the doll actually came to life and attacked people (like Chucky), we could occasionally get something other than a goddamn jump scare.
The performances of the three leads have received a lot of praise and, although I don’t recognize any of the actresses, they are all solid. I wish they were playing characters that aren’t fucking morons even by horror movie standards, but the performances themselves are quite strong even if the characters are forgettable nonsense. What’s worse is a godawful comic relief character that keeps popping up in the form of a jackoff that wants to bang the babysitter. Why, in a film this safe and maddeningly not scary, do we need this dufus showing up with a guitar to try to woo one of the girls is freaking beyond me. But in case you are getting too frightened by absolutely nothing happening, this guy will show up with an awkward comedy routine.
I’ve officially gone from being indifferent to these movies to actively hating them. This isn’t even a good kid’s horror movie. If you want to see a good PG-13 horror movie with a similar setup that’s both bloodier and far scarier than this R-rated movie, then watch The Gate. As for this series, up next is The Conjuring 3. This is getting complicated at this point, but I think that the series timeline is now The Nun – Annabelle: Creation – Annabelle – The Conjuring – Annabelle Comes Home – The Curse of La Llorona– The Conjuring 2. Where does this series go from here? Will anything happen in the next one? One thing is for certain: I don’t give a fuck anymore.
Image By:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabelle_Comes_Home#/media/File:AnnabelleComesHomePoster.jpg
