We Are Movie Geeks

I went into ANNABELLE with a slight bias: I love creepy doll films. Yes, it sounds amateurish to enjoy such a silly and niche aspect of the horror genre, but I grew up with watching and reading so many stories about toys coming to life. The idea may not be as overdone as zombies, but there’s a number of classic characters that I love for being a little nightmare in plastic form. So it should come as no surprise that I was excited about a film featuring the creepy doll from last year’s scare-fest THE CONJURING. As an added bonus, I love cinematographer John R. Leonetti’s work on both INSIDIOUS films, DEAD SILENCE, and THE CONJURING, and was curious to see him step into the director’s chair. Given all of this, I still ask myself what went wrong?

Mia and John are expecting their first child. As a gift for his wife and the new baby, John gives her a new and rare doll to add to her collection. One night the happy couple awake to a sound next door. When John goes to investigate he uncovers a deranged couple who have murdered the neighbors and who now intend to attack them. A fight in the home results in Mia getting stabbed in the stomach and the violent couple shot dead. What is even stranger is that Mia’s new doll is found in the hands of one of the killers with a mysterious symbol written in blood over her. When weird visions appear to Mia in the months that follow, she begins to think that it might have something to do with the cult members that broke into her home and her new doll.

An exhausting amount of effort is spent trying to show the happy couple in a sympathetic light. It’s almost as if the film feels the need to compensate for weak dialogue by giving us so much dialogue and narrative between them. More isn’t always merrier. Annabelle Wallis (ironic name) serves as an adequate replacement for Naomi Watts in the female lead and creates enough of a character for the audience to feel the impact when she gets thrown into some scary situations. Leave it to modern marketing though to spoil two of the best scares in the entire film. There are only three really good scares in ANNABELLE and two are completely spoiled by the commercials and trailers – the opening cult group break-in and a later scene involving a jump-cut from a little girl to a woman are both perfectly staged. A scene involving a storage basement and a faulty elevator is extremely effective and makes up the third and probably best scare in the entire film.

I previously stated how much I love the look that Leonetti gave to INSIDIOUS. It’s a great horror movie. That doesn’t mean you need to copy it though. ANNABELLE is basically the same structure and layout as INSIDIOUS but with half the imagination and half the scares. Writer Gary Dauberman is mainly to blame for this. You could lay the two films side-by-side and connect the plot points and you would be shocked at all the similarities – more shocking at least than the actual film. Let’s take a look at all the similarities. Both films have a story that is triggered by a traumatic event that happens to the family. They then flash-forward some years and the first minor scare takes place at night involving a loud noise. In INSIDIOUS it’s the sound of the house alarm that Patrick Wilson runs downstairs to stop and in ANNABELLE you have a malfunctioning sewing machine causing a loud noise that Ward Horton runs downstairs to stop. Next you have the role of the husband and father figure who always seems to be away during all of the haunting shenanigans involving his home alone wife. Instead of the husband being a teacher as in INSIDIOUS you now have the husband being away as a doctor. Also you have in both films the family having to move from one home, thinking that is going to solve their haunting problems, but in reality the problems continue in their new home. Then you have the psychic character previously played by Lin Shaye whose role is similarly split by two people in ANNABELLE in the form of a bookstore medium and an old priest. Finally you have the visual of a demon that is haunting the house whose painted face pops up several times. However they did go so far as to change the face from being red and black to just straight black in ANNABELLE. Job well done ANNABELLE (cue eye roll).

Even though the movie is being advertised as a creepy doll film, ANNABELLE feels like nothing of the sort. The porcelain figure appears on-screen for maybe a total of 10 minutes. Never does she move or blink like we have come to expect from Chucky or any number of other dolls. There’s one scene much later on where it suddenly levitates but it feels like a last ditch effort by the director since he gave us nothing involving the actual doll for the first hour. By default ANNABELLE should have been a fun and scary night at the movies. If an emphasis had placed on being fun than perhaps it wouldn’t feel like such an overly serious slog to get through. If you want to watch ANNABELLE, I‘d suggest you watch the similarly structured and much more successful INSIDIOUS. If you want to watch a creepy doll, there are far better choices that you can play with at night.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5