Miss Me? A Recap of Just Why Annabelle Was So Effective in The Conjuring
When Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema announced they were going ahead with an Annabelle spinoff from their 2013 summer smash The Conjuring, I wasn’t even remotely surprised. Not because the film was such a massive success (though it was both creatively and commercially), but because the Annabelle doll has already made such an indelible mark in the horror world and is one of the few new totems of the genre that has truly made an impact in the past few decades.
Go ahead, wrack your brain searching for any given object from a horror film in the past 30 years and see if it has the resonance Annabelle does. The mask from Scream? That’s an extension of a character and you could argue that it’s less scary than Annabelle since Scream itself is a subversionary meta-slasher. Freddy Krueger’s glove? Also an extension of a character (and pushing 30 at this point anyway). To me, Annabelle works regardless of the amount of screen time she has because she represents everything that is nasty, unknown and out to get you. Let’s put it this way, I occasionally receive odd promo items. When a replica of Annabelle appeared on my doorstep last year, my wife’s very first response was, “get that the f*ck out of here!” As a fan of The Conjuring, she couldn’t abide such a thing in her home (even though it’s actually still in the closet, perhaps unbeknownst to her).
The first few minutes of The Conjuring may not focus on the film’s primary demon, but they are crucial moments when it comes to setting the tone. James Wan, who could at this point be considered a modern master of horror, wisely chose the Annabelle doll to cement the off-kilter suspense of the film even though she’s not even the primary threat in this chapter. The film also expertly builds tension around the object, we know it’s capable of true evil but we’re not exactly sure how that evil will be executed, leaving the audience’s imagination to run wild.
How will the Annabelle doll fare as the star of her own film with more screen time? That remains to be seen but I don’t think that narrowing the movie’s focus down to her makes her any less scary (it also doesn’t hurt that Annabelle director John R. Leonetti has been James Wan’s director of photography for some time and was crucial to establishing the look of The Conjuring). In fact, if the film plays its cards right I don’t see any reason why the reign of the Annabelle doll can’t be long and fruitful.
Find out by seeing Annabelle, in theaters now!