While I already thought David F. Sandberg‘s Lights Out was a genuinely frightening throwback to classic horror, this clip from his Annabelle: Creation shows what a master craftsman he already is. Shown to the San Diego Comic-Con audience, a girl uses a James Wan-esque device to shoot a ball into a dark closet. When something grabs it, she runs into her bunk and hides under the covers. The bed then shakes, causing her to look down, which is where she spots demonic footprints leading around her bed. There, Annabelle sits…and a demon’s hand grabs it and pulls it off camera. In a theater, this should play extraordinarily well. Our own Kalyn Corrigan saw it, writing in her review that it’s “a very welcome addition to The Conjuring universe.”
In Annabelle: Creation, “Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.”
[Related] We Visited the Gothic Set of Annabelle: Creation
The full cast includes Stephanie Sigman (Spectre), Talitha Bateman (The 5th Wave), Lulu Wilson (Ouija 2), Philippa Anne Coulthard (After the Dark), Grace Fulton (Badland), Lou Lou Safran (The Choice), Samara Lee (The Last Witch Hunter), Tayler Buck, Anthony LaPaglia (TV’s Without a Trace) and Miranda Otto (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy).
Sandberg directed from a screenplay by Gary Dauberman, who also wrote Annabelle.
