Editorials
[SXSW] We Saw Some of ‘Annabelle 2’, Which Focuses on Mood and Atmosphere
It’s no secret that Annabelle, John R. Leonetti’s 2014 spinoff of The Conjuring, wasn’t exactly the best horror offering of the year. No one was really asking for a sequel, but a domestic haul of $84 million(!) said otherwise. It would be fair to say that expectations for the film were pretty low, at least until Lights Out director David F. Sandberg was announced as the director of Annabelle 2. This isn’t the first time that a talented horror director has been tasked with directing the sequel of a poorly-received horror film, and it certainly won’t be the last.
In an effort to convince skeptical audiences that his film will be an improvement over its predecessor, Sandberg took part in the “Face Your Fears” filmmaker discussion at the SXSW Conference and Festivals in Austin, Texas. At the panel, Sandberg and It director Andrés Muschietti treated attendees to an exclusive sneak peak of their respective films. Was Bloody Disgusting there to view the footage? You bet we were! Here are our thoughts on the two scenes that Sandberg elected to show us.
Related Article: We’ve Seen Footage from Stephen King’s It!
The time period that Annabelle 2 takes place in was not mentioned, but like Ouija: Origin of Evil, it seems like this may be a prequel that chronicles the origin of the titular doll. The plot of the film centers around a dollmaker and his wife who, after the death of their little girl, welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.
***SPOILERS TO FOLLOW***
In the first scene that was shown:
Janice (Talitha Bateman), who must walk using a forearm crutch, is hears music coming from a record player in a room that belongs to the dollmaker’s daugher. Sitting on the dead girl’s bed is the Annabelle doll. She goes to turn off the record player when another girl (Ouija: Origin of Evil’s Lulu Wilson) walks in and surprises her. The girls argue for a bit because they’re not supposed to be in the room, and then they get into a skirmish. One of them picks up a toy gun and fires a ping pong-type ball at Annabelle’s head. After arguing for a bit more they notice that Annabelle’s head has suddenly turned to face them. This scares Wilson’s character and she leaves Janice alone in the room with the doll.
After looking around a bit longer, Janice finds a diary with about three or four pages filled out. She flips though the remaining blank pages until she comes across a page with the words “Today I came home” scrawled on it. At that moment the door shuts by itself, frightening Janice. Eventually, two puppets appear in a toy puppet theater and begin moving by themselves. Janice grabs one of the puppets only to see that there is no one actually operating the puppets.
Janice then notices a young girl standing at the window, looking out into the yard while tapping the glass. Still facing the window, the girl (who is clearly the dollmaker’s deceased daughter) asks Janice if she can help her. Rather than immediately run out of the room, Janice asks the girl what she needs. Then, in a very effective jump scare, the girl goes full Bilbo Baggins and turns around to reveal a demonic face before screaming in a much deeper voice “Your soul!” Janice, finally wising up, attempts to run out of the room on her crutches. The door slams on her, but she manages to open it up and make it to the hall. All of the doors in the hall slam shut on her and she limps over to the stairs. She lifts herself into the lift chair and straps herself and flips the switch.
The chair doesn’t work initially, and she repeatedly flips the switch for a few torturous seconds as the door to the bedroom opens up and some black tendrils snake their way out into the hall. Finally, the chair starts working and begins its slow descent down the stairs. (I should point out that this moment in the scene is a very effective moment of suspense.) The chair makes it about two thirds of the way down the stairs before it stops and begins slowly ascending the rail. She sees the little girl glaring at her from the top, but once the chair reaches the top she is nowhere to be seen. Janice is then lifted out of her chair and thrown to the floor below.
In the second scene that was shown:
Janice is outside, but in a wheelchair thanks to her incident in the previous scene. She seems nervous, but the dollkeeper’s wife calms her down and tells her to enjoy the fresh air. The woman leaves her outside to relax. Suddenly another woman (her face remains off-screen) grabs Janice’s wheelchair and begins pushing it towards a barn (fun fact: we learned that this is the “rape barn” from HBO’s Westworld). Janice is shoved inside the barn and thrown off the chair.
She looks around the barn and crawls under some floorboards, where she begins to hear someone walking above her. She then looks off to the side and sees the girl that attacked her before crawling on the ground (think the game of hide-and-seek from The Visit) towards her. The girl attacks Janice, mounts her and then vomits a bunch of black goo into her mouth.
I’m fully aware that a reading a description of a scene isn’t really fun for you guys (and it certainly doesn’t do the footage justice), but until the studio releases the footage online there’s not much else we can do. I can tell you that there does seem to be a bigger emphasis on mood and atmosphere in this film. There are some jump scares, but they were handled well. The footage didn’t blow me away, but it was solid, which at least gives me hope for the sequel (prequel?).
Annabelle 2 will be released nationwide on August 11, 2017.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Mountain Man’ – Joe Manganiello Will Battle Zombies in Upcoming Horror Movie
‘The Blair Witch Project’ – Original Stars Release a Statement Asking Lionsgate for Residuals & Recognition
‘Trap’ – Official Trailer Previews a Wild New Horror Experience from M. Night Shyamalan
‘The Exorcism’ – Russell Crowe Stars in Horror Movie Formerly Titled ‘The Georgetown Project’
You must be logged in to post a comment.