Annabelle is the prequel to The Conjuring that explains the origin of the evil doll. Annabelle: Creation is the prequel to Annabelle that explains the origin of the evil doll. So right off the bat, this thing just exudes necessity. I have been searching through the encyclopedia of film knowledge in my head and I can’t come up with another example of a prequel to a prequel. Regardless, this just isn’t my cup of tea. Horror is my favorite genre and I never miss a new horror film during my weekly excursions to the theater. But I was raised watching A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc. and feel that all the haunting/possession movies that comprise the modern genre suffer from a distinct lack of creative stabbings. That said, this is a marginal improvement on the original and will likely please fans of this sort of thing (like The Conjuring, Insidious, Paranormal Activity and almost every other horror movie in the last decade).
Annabelle: Creation tells us that the doll was made by a father for his daughter, but she is then killed when hit by a car that Helen Keller would have seen coming. Without a pet cemetery nearby, the couple then pray for any force that is willing to bring their daughter back from the grave. God doesn’t take their calls, but a demon appears, takes possession of the doll and cuts off part of the wife’s face (which is rude because that’s totally not what they were asking for). If you had a demon-possessed doll that disfigured your wife, would you A. Have the doll blessed by a priest, line the walls of a closet with pages from the bible and lock it in the closet or B. Get rid of the fucking thing. If you chose option B, then your savvy street smarts have no place in this film. So with an evil doll in the closet and a disfigured wife wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask while descending into lunacy, they do the only logical thing: convert the home into a boarding house for orphaned girls. That goes about as well as any sane person would expect and it ultimately ties into the beginning of the first Annabelle, thus answering questions that absolutely nobody asked. I will give the film credit for not manufacturing a happy ending, though.
I was mainly just bored by this, as it just goes down a checklist of modern horror clichés: jump scares, body contortion, people being pulled offscreen by an unseen force, etc. Yeah, the old horror movies that I love are filled with clichés too, but they were more entertaining clichés and usually accompanied by copious gore and nudity. One of my biggest gripes with the first Annabelle was that I hoped for something more akin to Child’s Play or Puppet Master. I wanted the doll to actually get up and kill people. But, no, the doll is just haunted and that allows these films to just be more modern haunted house movies with a doll as a focal point. Really, the doll is just an arbitrary object for what is going on around it. It could be a haunted sneaker and the only difference is the posters would look less creepy. I also have absolutely no idea why this is R-rated. There is no gore, sex or nudity. I don’t even recall anybody fucking cursing. This review is now more R-rated than the movie. It feels more like a Goosebumps adaptation than an R-rated horror film.
I don’t have much to say about this because I was just bored and feel like I have seen this same boring movie a million times now. There is nothing technically wrong with it, other than some shitty computer effects. The acting is fine, the directing is fine, the camerawork is fine. But absolutely nothing stood out to me. I don’t even have anything to be particularly angry about. That being said, the audience that I was with seemed to eat it up. Every time the doll moved slightly or some loud noise surprised the characters, the audience responded with the requisite screams and yells of “oh shit!”. So the movie is, I suppose, doing what it was meant to do. I just need something more graphic or disturbing in my horror films than a doll’s head tilting slightly. But with The Conjuring 3 on the way along with more spinoff films (The Nun next year, The Crooked Man the year after that), there are more jump scares and possessions in my future. So audiences will get to continue yelling “oh shit!” at the slightest movement for years to come while I continue trying to stay awake until the end credits roll.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabelle:_Creation#/media/File:Annabelle_Creation.jpg
