It took seven films, but the Conjuring movies are finally playing with the formula. Kind of.
The ongoing adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who investigate the supernatural and who always seem to encounter one demonic entity that’s worthy of their own spin-off, get self-referential with Annabelle Comes Home, a film that is ostensibly about a killer doll but is actually about their whole creepy collection of accursed artifacts.
Written and directed by Gary Dauberman (who also wrote Annabelle, Annabelle Creation and The Nun), the new film explores the Warren family as caretakers of the paranormal, the impact their controversial lifestyle has on their daughter, and indulges in extreme fan service as the artifact room we saw in the original The Conjuring finally gets a movie of its own, unleashing a horde of demonic creatures all at once.
And yes, they’re all worthy of their own spin-offs.
Annabelle Comes Home tells the story of young Judy Warren (Mckenna Grace, The Haunting of Hill House), who has psychic powers just like her mother. While Ed and Lorraine are away, Judy and her babysitter, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween), settle in for a quiet night. But then Mary Ellen’s best friend Daniela (Katie Sarife, Twisted Sisters) invites herself over, breaks into the artifact room and unlocks Annabelle’s cabinet, which leads to a supernatural prison break and a heck of a lot of jump scares.
It’s basically the worst slumber party ever. If that sounds like a Goosebumps movie, a sort of PG-13 romp full of shrieking and quipping and harmless CGI scares, it’s not. The R-rated Annabelle Comes Home is a grim and chilling horror movie. The body count may be low but the peril is extreme. Nobody in Annabelle Comes Home is having a good time… except the audience of course.
Dauberman treats Annabelle Comes Home not as an excuse for monster mayhem – although there is plenty of it – but instead an excuse to trap three young women in a house together and make them confront their anxieties. Judy Warren is just starting to experience her own psychic phenomena, and she’s starting to retreat inward, into a lifestyle of perpetual fear. Daniela recently lost her father in a car accident, and her fascination with the Warrens stems from a genuine, personal, guilt-ridden fascination with the afterlife. Mary Ellen’s life-experience may seem relatively charmed in comparison, but it’s still her responsibility to keep everyone safe, and that’s easier said than done when killer bridal gowns and ghost werewolves are attacking everyone she’s supposed to care for tonight.
Grace, Iseman and Sarife are natural, nimble performers, capable of shifting believably from melancholy to amusement as Dauberman’s script calls for it. If the monsters never attacked, and instead Annabelle Comes Home was a serious drama about three young women searching their feelings over the course of an evening, it would be a fine film.
But we know they’re in a Conjuring movie, and if Annabelle Comes Home has a serious flaw it’s that it builds so much tension as we wait for the demons to attack that it collapses under its own weight after a while. It’s one thing to make the audience eager for the action to start, it’s another thing altogether to make us impatient, and Dauberman’s film pushes it.
However, once the film gets going, and the nightmares are unveiled, it’s a fast-paced and unnerving experience. The cinematography by Michael Burgess (The Curse of La Llorona) is moody and natural until the lights go out, and then he toys with that murk to maximum, frightening effect. Little details poke out of the void, as we search the corners for hints as to which of the ethereal silhouettes will attack our heroes next. It’s a twisted thrill to watch the protagonists of a horror movie put all their energy into conquering their fears of one monster, only to have their legs pulled out from under them by a demon the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
Annabelle Comes Home never loses the streak of genuine humanity that sets the Conjuring movies apart from many of its horror franchise counterparts, and Dauberman skillfully keeps that emotional realism alive even when he’s basically just throwing ideas for future spin-offs in the same room together, to see what would happen. It’s half-playful and half-sincere, and a spirited attempt to keep the series fresh just when it was starting to codify and wallow in its own formula.
Although it may be a little slow for its own good, at least in the first half, Annabelle Comes Home ultimately reveals itself to be a satisfying, dramatic and spooky spin-off, loaded with original shocks and frightening new demons. And, of course, the promise of more entertaining installments to come.
You’d better get started on that Hellhound movie, Warner Bros. (Like, yesterday.)
