You’ll see a lot of love for creepy toy movies coming from me, it’s one of my guiltiest pleasures. I own all Puppet Master movies, Child’s Play, and you can probably guess my favorite segment from Trilogy of Terror. So, though not technically a “killer toy” movie I was really excited to see Annabelle.
This review does contain minor spoilers, please be cautious when reading.
Annabelle is a prequel/spinoff from James Wan’s spectacular haunted house movie, The Conjuring. The conceit behind this is a film set in the past, it starts off in 1969, and tells us about the origin story of the doll in question. At the start Annabelle is a very normal doll, in spite of her horrific look, who is gifted to Mia from her husband John because she is a collector. One night while the young couple is asleep they hear screams from the neighbors and discover they have been murdered. Mia is attacked in the house by the female killer who was actually their neighbor’s estranged daughter, Annabelle. Apparently Annabelle joined a satanic cult and was coming back to her parents to kill them and hopefully summon some sort of demon. The police arrive and shoot Annabelle’s boyfriend as she locks herself in Mia’s doll room clutching the creepy doll in her arms and kills herself. Her blood drips into devil Polly Pocket’s eye and we see a cryptic symbol drawn in blood above her.
Let’s be clear on one thing here, and it’s important: JAMES WAN DID NOT DIRECT THIS MOVIE!
Not one minute of this film was directed by Wan who has pretty much solidified his horror status with The Conjuring and Saw. Instead it’s directed by John R. Leonetti who directed such delights as The Butterfly Effect 2 and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Leonetti also is a cinematographer by trade and has done a lot of work for Wan in the past, including Insidious and Dead Silence. Basically, Wan became good friends with Leonetti and threw him this movie to help him out after the cinematic disaster that was Butterfly Effect 2.
I realize that Annabelle was never meant to be a killer toy in the way Chucky or Blade were, which is sad because I could have gotten a lot more enjoyment from that. Instead we get a skeleton execution of an interesting and creepy idea. How do you make a movie with a doll that creepy and somehow manage to not make it scary in the least. Of course there are jump scares, the scariest of which being spoiled in the trailer, but they don’t even have near the effect caused in The Conjuring.
Annabelle is a very bland and generic take on a story like this. The leads, Annabelle (ironic) Wallis and Ward Horton certainly look the part of a middle class white couple living in the early 70s but other than that they don’t do much else to keep our attention. After a while they begin to just fade into the background, particularly Horton who conveniently is a Med School intern and is very rarely around for any of the demonic action that plagues Mia. Neither of them seem as nearly concerned as they should in life and both are far too easily taken in by the supernatural. If the characters believe it’s something spiritual right off the bat it robs the audience of scarier moments later on in the movie. Mia and John almost immediately agree it’s something evil and head straight to their priest.
The priest is just one of 3 characters in this film that go absolutely nowhere. At the beginning we meet him when he wants to take a picture of Mia and her new born baby. This would be a good, though clichéd, opportunity for a scare like the demon or ghost in the background, but nope. Just a weird thing this guy likes to do. And while we’re on the subject of the priest, he is extremely quick to agree with the couple that an exorcism must be performed on the doll. But if I remember right it took Regan’s mom months of tests and procedures before they decided to call in Father Merrin and this is about the same time period. I know because the early 70s are crammed down my eye sockets every 2 minutes. The movie even starts out with Mia watching news coverage on The Manson Family. I get it movie, we’re in the past and that would be great if the actual idea of a time period mattered but it doesn’t! It isn’t crucial to the plot, it could happen in any time, this one just so happens to fit into sequence with The Conjuring and Ed and Loraine Warren’s lives. Stop it with the references already, I kept expecting Don Draper to walk in.
My final gripe on Annabelle is its overly convenient plot devices. Mia and John just so happen to move next door to a couple whose daughter returns with a cult member and is just so happening to try and summon a demon and just so happens to conjure it into the world’s creepiest doll and on and on and on. There is even a character who falls under what Spike Lee famously termed “Magical Negro” who is sent to help out the white character because of their inside knowledge to what is going on. This archetype is both clichéd and insulting to audiences and filmmakers alike.
While Annabelle could have been a very creepy story with a lot of interesting mythology intertwined it instead gives us a mirage of potential. The best thing about Annabelle is it leaves off right as the story from The Conjuring begins. It sets it up perfectly to go into the next story about the nurses who had it, which means no sequel since we already were told that story!