Annabelle’s back, and this time, she’s not toying around.
The Conjuring universe is one of the most exciting horror franchises in popular cinema today, thanks in large part to creator and genre mastermind James Wan. The first Annabelle invoked nearly $257 million at the box office back in 2014, and now, two Conjuring films and one Nun spin-off announcement later, the little doll everyone loves to fear is back for more frights, and Lights Out director David F. Sandberg is at the helm.
In July of 2016, I was fortunate enough to visit the set of the latest Wan produced feature, Annabelle 2 a.k.a. Annabelle: Creation. Representing Bloody Disgusting, I was lucky enough to speak with the cast and crew, walk through the impressively detailed studio based gothic farmhouse, and even spend some time sitting next to Annabelle herself (which was creepy, to say the least). I learned a lot about what to expect from the upcoming film, and I’m happy to say that it looks like it’s going to be a very promising addition to an already thrilling franchise.
“To me, it’s a lot less pressure because it’s not my first [film]” says director Sandberg about working on his big summer blockbuster. “Like with Lights Out I was like, ‘Oh, this is my shot at Hollywood, this is it’ whereas now I’m like, ‘I’ve been on a film set, I know how it works’, and it feels like a lot less pressure”.
Sandberg made a name for himself when his three-minute short film simply titled “Lights Out” caught the eye of horror maestro James Wan, who came on board to produce the feature length version shortly thereafter. Playing on an innate fear-of-the-dark premise, Lights Out stars Teresa Palmer and tells the story of a demon named Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey) who can only be seen when the lights are turned out. Starting with a simple scenario and evolving into a full-on commentary on mental health, Lights Out combines effective scares with intelligent discussion and effectively wooed audiences all over the globe. It’s no wonder that Wan and crew were eager to work with the upcoming visionary yet again.
“We were just finishing up post on Lights Out and the tests did really well, and the studio was really happy with it so the studio came to me and said, ‘Do you want to do Annabelle?’ and I was like ‘Yeah, let’s go!’” exclaims Sandberg excitedly. “It was just like of course, I loved the script, and it was a period movie, in an orphanage, and we were gonna be shooting in a studio, so it was perfect”.
The first Conjuring film is inspired by real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, and details one of their many cases, focusing on a family in Rhode Island who experience a haunting in their home during the 1970s. Although the film centers around this lakeside farmhouse, the opening scenes begin with the side story of an evil doll named Annabelle who terrorizes two nurses to the point where they’re forced to reach out for help. After telling their terrifying tale, the Warrens take the doll home and lock it up in a secure spot in their basement, next to all of their other horrid little artifacts that they’ve collected and locked away over the years.
In the first Annabelle film, we get a closer look at the wicked inanimate object brought to life by sinister forces. Directed by John R. Leonetti and produced by Wan, Annabelle begins with a young couple being brutally attacked by a satanic cult, and follows their story as the doll they attempted to abandon somehow makes its way back into their lives…before trying to end them, once and for all.
Now, in Annabelle: Creation, we’re digging in even deeper to Annabelle’s origins and discovering what made her so evil in the first place. The fact is that even though this film is technically the second Annabelle movie, it is actually a prequel to the 2014 entry, meaning that the timeline in this universe is told in this order: 1) Annabelle: Creation, 2) Annabelle, 3) The Conjuring, and 4) The Conjuring 2.
“The idea always was, right from the get go, to create a universe, but you don’t go out and tout that as being the goal” explains producer Peter Safran. “You start off by just making one good movie. But the idea was certainly that using the Warrens life rights and access to their cases, that would be a really good starting point. It was actually James Wan who suggested putting Annabelle into the opening of the original Conjuring. It was not in the script when he came on board as director. That was not in there, so that was totally him and it was planted for the obvious reasons. After the first [Conjuring] came out we had so much fan interest in Annabelle, both because she was already a well-known entity, but also I think people liked what we did with her in the first movie. A lot of people were really interested in her background, her origins, where she was and where she’s going – so it was pretty natural. New Line has been very supportive of doing a modestly priced spin-off that if we made a really good movie would go out on 3,000 screens, and if we didn’t, it would probably never see the light of day. Fortunately, we made a movie that tested extremely well, and that was the beginning of it all, so when it came time to do Conjuring 2, obviously, in the same manner, we wanted to plant spinoff opportunities, because you never really know what’s going to capture the audience’s imagination. But we knew there were some options in there. The Nun really was the one that everyone gravitated towards and so that was it.”
In Annabelle: Creation, a doll maker and his wife, named Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto) lose their only little girl in a horrific freak car accident. Many years later, stuck in a big empty farmhouse with no little feet running around to fill it, the couple agrees to open their doors and let a dying orphanage use their home as their new resting spot. A nun named Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman) and her six orphan girls travel out to the desolate space, gratefully claim their new rooms, and do their best to settle in. Janice (Talitha Bateman), a sweet blonde-haired beauty with a physical disability and her best friend Linda (Lulu Wilson) quickly become our two main stars, as they are perceived as the weakest of the bunch, and are therefore become easy prey for the evil that dwells within these walls.
“Linda is 10 years old, like me, and she has just come to a new orphanage, and she’s not really sure about it, because she sees the doll and it really freaks her out, but her best friend, Janice, is kind of trying to help her get used to it,” explains Lulu Wilson about her character Linda. “My bedroom is very scary. It’s like all of these doll mannequins everywhere, and like clothes everywhere and it’s pretty freaky, and like bunk beds with like ripped up sheets. It’s pretty scary. I don’t know why my character would pick that room.”
Of course, the scariest thing in the house isn’t the bedroom. It’s what hiding in the bedroom that Mr. Mullins forbids the girls from going into. A grim grinning ghoul with painted on features and a devious look in her faded pale eyes, just looking at Annabelle is enough to send a chill down your spine. However, as frightening as the Annabelle doll appears at first glance, according to director Sandberg, one of the most challenging aspects of having a doll as the villain is the fact that she’s not allowed to move to elicit frights.
“The hard thing is that the doll is not supposed to move, so it’s hard working with that because you have this stationary object that’s supposed to be scary, so you have to move her when no one’s looking, like you look away, and you look back and she’s moved,” says Sandberg methodically. “You can’t have her run around, you have like an evil glance suddenly, and then you sort of play with the forces around her, like Mrs. Mullins and some other stuff. She’s sort of just the vessel, the portal for evil.”
In order to scare his audience, Sandberg is forced to rely less on moving Annabelle, and more on playing up the demonic forces that surround her, such as the ‘Evil Mrs. Mullins’, an entity who lurks around the house and occasionally scares the living daylight out of the girls; played by brilliant stunt actor Alicia Vela-Bailey. Although she’s new to The Conjuring universe, Vela-Bailey worked with director Sandberg before when she played the creature of darkness Diana in his first film Lights Out and has appeared in a multitude of other projects, including Avatar, Divergent, and the upcoming Wonder Woman.
“It’s funny, before this I was the female freak in The Purge, so like I’m doing all these horror mask movies,” says Vela-Bailey with a gleam in her eye. “This is awesome, but it was just like, I don’t know, it’s just so much fun to be this character that I’m not, you know, and actually my first one I did Hostel 3, and I got to do this scene where I kill this guy with crossbow arrows. It’s so evil, he’s like tied up and I had so much fun doing it, and when I tell people about how much fun I’m having, like pretending to kill someone, they’re like, uh, you’re creeping me out. It sounds horrible, but I’m like, it’s just fake. I don’t really think this, but it just like, being something you’re not and it’s so much fun, playing make-believe. You play it as a kid, and now, I get paid to do it.”
When it came to portraying the Evil Mrs. Mullins, Vela-Bailey recalled that she and director Sandberg slightly harked back to what they had done with Diana on Lights Out, but focused more heavily on making her character appear elderly and atrophied.
“For this, I mean, the long fingers, you know, kind of reminded us of Diana [in Lights Out] in a way, but because she’s portraying, you know, an evil Mrs. Mullins, she’s, the main thing for him was more like, don’t be so upright all the time. It’s more like an old-ladyish, you know, so like hunched over and you know, and because a lot of this, the scenes I’ve done, have been in low light silhouette or whatnot, you have to play with movement and you know, if you’re just a shadow, you don’t want to be so closed up. You kind of have to open up and defray and use the light and you know, finger movement, so it’s just making it as eerie as possible and it’s not too hard when you look like that, to be eerie. It’s fun.”
As for the farmhouse itself, as I stepped through the front door and into the gothic entryway, it was hard to believe I was still on a set at the Warner Bros lot. Stepping into that house felt like stepping into another world. Although it had been built just a few weeks prior, production designer Jennifer Spence managed to create an air of aging so authentic that it felt as though that decrepit old two story had been withering away for over a dozen years. Misty books scattered the shelves, carved in crucifixes allowed in small slits of sunlight into darkened rooms, and red tainted glass lined the stairwell and the sliding dividing doors. Incomplete pieces of mannequins overflowed and filled up what was to be Linda and Janice’s room, making it both clear that a doll maker had once resided there, and also, that now an evil spirit had taken over what was once a happy space. A secret passageway made a good hiding place under the stairs, and a rickety stair lift sat neatly on top – a seat that no doubt had once been meant for Mrs. Mullins, but now probably served an updated purpose as a way for Janice to reach her room. A little closet papered over with ripped out bible verses made for a Carrie White-esque room, which Sandberg later revealed was meant to house Annabelle’s evil, and the room in which the closet resided came complete with a doll house, a setting for a tea party, and a Punch and Judy play house. Spence told us as we wandered about that she would probably be brought to tears when it came time to tear the place down, and after seeing it in person with my own eyes, I completely understand why. The story excited me, the actors interested me, but the house is what sold me – in simple terms, it was beautiful, and with legendary cinematographer Maxime Alexandre behind the camera, it’s sure to be a gorgeous looking film, no matter how strong the subject material turns out to be. I can’t wait to see this movie, and for fans of The Conjuring universe, I’d say that they have a lot to look forward to.
Annabelle: Creation hits theaters everywhere on August 11th, 2017.
“When I was just a little girl I asked my mother, what will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me: Qué será, será. Whatever will be, will be”
The opening of Michael Lehmann’s Heathers begins with a dreamy cover of a familiar song. Angelic voices ask a mother to predict the future only to be met with an infuriating response: “whatever will be, will be.” Her answer is most likely intended to present a life of limitless possibility, but as the introduction to a film devoid of competent parents, it feels like a noncommittal platitude. Heathers is filled with teenagers looking for guidance only to be let down by one adult after another. Gen Xers and elder millennials may have glamorized the outlandish fashion and creative slang while drooling over a smoking hot killer couple, but the violent film now packs an ominous punch. 35 years later, those who enjoyed Heathers in its original run may have more in common with the story’s parents than its teens. That’s right, Lehmann’s Heathers is now old enough to worry about its kids.
Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) is the newest member of Westerberg High’s most popular clique. Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), sits atop this extreme social hierarchy ruling her minions and classmates alike with callous cruelty and massive shoulder pads. When Veronica begins dating a mysterious new student nicknamed J.D. (Christian Slater), they bond over hatred for her horrendous “friends.” After a vicious fight, a prank designed to knock Heather off her high horse goes terribly wrong and the icy mean girl winds up dead on her bedroom floor. Veronica and J.D. frantically stage a suicide, unwittingly making Heather more popular than ever. But who will step in to fill her patent leather shoes? With an ill-conceived plan to reset the social order, has Veronica created an even more dangerous monster?
Heathers debuted near the end of an era. John Hughes ruled ’80s teen cinema with instant classics like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off while the Brat Pack dominated headlines with devil-may-care antics and sexy vibes. The decade also saw the rise of the slasher; a formulaic subgenre in which students are picked off one by one. Heathers combines these two trends in a biting satire that challenges the feel-good conclusions of Hughes and his ilk. Rather than a relatable loser who wins a date with the handsome jock or a loveable misfit who stands up to a soulless principal, Lehmann’s film exists in a world of extremes. The popular kids are vapid monsters, the geeks are barely human, the outcasts are psychopaths, and the adults are laughably incompetent. Veronica and a select few of her classmates feel like human beings, but the rest are outsized archetypes designed to push the teen comedy genre to its outer limits.
Mean girls have existed in fiction ever since Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters tried to steal her man, but modern iterations arguably date back to Rizzo (Stockard Channing, Grease) and Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen, Carrie). It might destroy Heather Chandler to know that she isn’t the first, but this iconic mean girl may be the most extreme. She knows exactly what her classmates think of her and uses her power to make others suffer. She reminds Veronica, “They all want me as a friend or a fuck. I’m worshiped at Westerburg and I’m only a junior.” With an icy glare and barely concealed rage, she stomps the halls playing cruel pranks and demanding her friends submit to her will. We see a brief glimpse of humanity at a frat party when she’s coerced into a sexual act, but she immediately squanders this good will by promising to destroy Veronica at school on Monday. However, the film does not revolve around Heather’s redemption and it doesn’t revel in her ruination. Lehmann is more concerned with how Veronica uses her own popularity than the way she dispatches her best friend/enemy. In her book Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, Anna Bogutskaya describes Heather Chandler as an evolution in female characterization and it’s refreshing to see a woman play such an unapologetic villain.
Heather Chandler may die in the film’s first act, but her legacy can still be felt in both film and TV. Shannen Doherty would go on to specialize in catty characters both onscreen and off while Walker’s performance inspired the 2004 comedy Mean Girls (directed by Mark Waters, brother of Heathers screenwriter Daniel Waters). Early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars all feature at least one glamorous bitch and mean girls can currently be seen battling on HBO’s Euphoria. Tina Fey’s Regina George (Rachel McAdams) sparked an important dialogue about female bullying and modern iterations add humanity to this contemptible character. With a rageful spit at her reflection in the mirror, Walker’s Heather hints at a deep well of pain beneath her unthinkable cruelty and we’ve been examining the motivations of her followers ever since.
But Heather Chandler is not the film’s major antagonist. While the blond junior roams the cafeteria insulting her classmates with an inane lunchtime poll, a true psychopath watches from the corner. J.D. lives with his construction magnate father and has spent his teenage years bouncing around from school to school. At first, Veronica is impressed with his frank morality and compassion for Heather’s victims, but this righteous altruism hides an inner darkness. The cafeteria scene ends with J.D. pulling a gun on two jocks and shooting them with blanks. This “prank” earns him a light suspension and a bad boy reputation, but it’s an uncomfortable precursor to our violent reality. He’s a prototypical school shooter obsessed with death, likely in response to his own traumatic past.
It’s impossible to talk about J.D. without mentioning the Columbine High School Massacre of 1999. Just over ten years later, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would murder one teacher and twelve of their fellow classmates while failing to ignite a bomb that would decimate the building. Rumors swirled in the immediate aftermath about trench coat-wearing outcasts targeting popular students, but these theories have been largely disproven. However, uncomfortable parallels persist. Harris convinced a fellow student to join him in murder with tactics similar to the manipulation J.D. uses on Veronica. The cinematic character also fails in a plan to blow up the school and the stories of all three young men end in suicide. There is no evidence to suggest the Columbine killers were inspired by Slater’s performance but these similarities lend an uncomfortable element of prophecy to an already dark film.
In the past 35 years, we’ve become acutely aware of the adolescent potential for destruction. Unfortunately the adults of Heathers have their heads in the sand. We watch darkly humorous faculty meetings in which teachers discuss what they believe to be suicides and openly weigh the value of one student over the next. The only grownup who seems to care is Ms. Fleming (Penelope Milford) the guidance counselor and even she is woefully out of touch. Using dated hippie language, she stages an event where she pressures her students to hold hands and emote. Unfortunately she’s more interested in helping herself. Hoping to capitalize on her own empathy, she invites TV cameras to film her students grieving for their friends. She treats the decision to stay alive like she would the choice between colleges and asks Veronia about her own suspected suicide attempt with the same banality Heather brings to the lunchtime polls. This self-involved counselor is only interested in recording the answer, not actually connecting with the students she’s supposed to be guiding.
We also see a shocking lack of support from the film’s parents. J.D. and his father have fallen into a bizarre role-reversal with J.D. adopting the persona of a ’50s-era sitcom dad and his father that of an obedient son. Like Ms. Fleming’s performance, these practiced exchanges are meant to project the illusion of love while maintaining emotional distance between parent and child. Veronica’s own folks display similar detachment in vapid conversations repeated nearly word for word. They go through the motions of communication without actually saying anything of substance. When Veronica tries to talk about the deaths of her friends, her mother cuts her off with a cold, “you’ll live.” The next time Mrs. Sawyer (Jennifer Rhodes) sees her daughter, she’s hanging from the ceiling. Fortunately Veronica has staged this suicide to deceive J.D., but it’s only in perceived death that we see genuine empathy from her mother.
Another parent is not so lucky. J.D. has concocted an elaborate scene to murder jocks Kurt (Lance Fenton) and Ram (Patrick Labyorteaux) in the guise of a joint suicide between clandestined lovers and the world now believes his ruse. At the crowded funeral, a grief-stricken father stands next to a coffin wailing, “I love my dead gay son” while J.D. wonders from the pews if he would have this same compassion if his son was alive. It’s a brutal moment of truth in an outlandish film. Perhaps better parenting could have prevented Kurt from becoming the kind of bully J.D. would target. We now have a better understanding about the emotional support teenagers need, but the students in Heathers have been thrown to the wolves.
At the same funeral, Veronica sees a little girl crying in the front row. She not only witnesses the collateral damage she’s caused, but realizes that future generations are watching her behavior. She is showing young girls that social change is only possible through violence and others are copying this deadly trend. Despite the popular song Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It!) by Big Fun, two other students attempt to take their own lives. Her teen angst has a growing body count and murdering her bullies has only turned them into martyrs.
Heathers delivers a somewhat happy ending by black comedy standards. After watching J.D. blow himself up, Veronica saunters back into school with a newfound freedom. She confronts Heather Duke (Doherty), the school’s reigning mean girl queen, and takes the symbolic red scrunchie out of her hair. Veronica declares herself the new sheriff in town and immediately begins her rule by making a friend. She approaches a severely bullied student and makes a date to watch videos on the night of the prom, using her popularity to lift someone else up. She’s learned on her own that taking out one Heather opens the door for someone else to step into the vacuum. The only way to combat toxic cruelty is to normalize acts of generosity. Rather than destroying her enemies, she will lead the school with kindness.
Heathers concludes with another rendition of “Que Sera, Sera.” In a more modern cover, a soloist delivers an informal answer hinting at a brighter future. We still don’t know what the future holds, but we don’t have to adhere to the social hierarchy we’ve inherited. We each have the power to decide what “will be” if we’re brave enough to separate ourselves from the popular crowd. The generation who watched Heathers as children are now raising their own teens and kids. One can only hope we’ve learned the lessons of this sharp satire. The future’s not ours to see, but if we guide our children with honesty and compassion, maybe we’ll raise a generation of Veronicas instead.
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