Are all dolls creepy, or is it just dolls in horror movies because we know there’s something that’s supposed to be creepy about them? I ask because the doll in Annabelle, a prequel to the 2013 horror hit The Conjuring, is freaky as hell from the jump and something I would definitely never want in my house. The creepy factor of the soon-to-be-possessed doll at the center of this new thriller aside, Annabelle is a largely effective little thriller, too bad it has a god awful ending.
Yet, Annabelle holds that frequent, horror movie mixture that has some audience members yelling “Just get rid of the doll! Set it on fire!” while others are left screaming, both in fright as well as good fun. At least, this was the mood with my audience, most of which seemed to have a pretty good time.
And, before you ask, no, you don’t need to have seen The Conjuring before seeing Annabelle. Seeing the previous film adds little to no context for this one as the story quickly introduces us to Mia and John Form (Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis), the unsuspecting couple that’s about to have their world turned upside down by a possessed doll.
Expecting their first child, with Mia ready to pop at any moment, the couple settle down in their new house in suburbia when terror strikes. Two members of a satanic cult have broken into their house and before both intruders are eventually killed, they have conjured up a demon that now finds a home in the new doll that sits in the freshly decorated baby’s room.
Almost immediately things go bump in the night. Mia begins seeing things and some wonderfully simple effects are used, most of them in-camera effects and highly effective at that. A scene where a young girl charges a closing door is about as simple as it gets, but it really works. Director John R. Leonetti (The Butterfly Effect 2) also isn’t afraid to show the demon that begins haunting the family and the decision pays off through a solid use of sound and field of vision.
Where the film suffers a misstep is in the introduction of Alfre Woodard as Evelyn, a kindly bookstore owner whose daughter died in a car accident. Evelyn befriends Mia, but Woodard always plays her as some kind of wide-eyed woman with a few screws that may be loose and by the film’s end she’s used in one of the most cliched, awful ways, almost entirely ruining the entire movie. I don’t want to say what happens exactly, but suffice to say, it serves as a step backwards for black characters in motion pictures.
It’s a shame this is what you’re left to walk out of the theaters thinking, despite a brief coda attempting to remind us this is a prequel to The Conjuring, which will get its own sequel next year. For the most part Annabelle is an effective little thriller with a smattering of jump scares and skin-crawling moments. The acting is a bit wooden, but we’re not here to be moved by performances, we’re here to be freaked out and on that level it has its moments, I just wish that ending hadn’t been so dreadful.
