Annabelle Movie Review: Unscary as the worst of the Chucky films.
Cast: Annabelle Wallis, Tony Amendola, Ward Horton, Alfre Woodard, Kerry O’Malley
Direction: John R. Leonetti
Genre: Horror
Duration: 1 hour 39 minutes
Summary: John Form has found the perfect gift for his expectant wife, Mia—a beautiful, rare vintage doll in a pure white wedding dress. But Mia’s delight with Annabelle doesn’t last long. On one horrific night, their home is invaded by members of a satanic cult, who violently attack the couple. Spilled blood and terror are not all they leave behind. The cultists have conjured an entity so malevolent that nothing they did will compare to the sinister conduit to the damned that is Annabelle.
MovieReview:
The idea of an evil doll as a trigger for a horror story has been adequately exploited in Child’s Play and its many Chucky sequels. In Annabelle the creepy possessed doll from last year’s The Conjuring gets its own origin story.
Back to his latest Annabelle: So, you remember that Victorian doll, called Annabelle, from The Conjuring, right? Yes the one with that hideous porcelain face, blonde braids, rouged cheeks, obscenely dark lipstick and thread-like eyebrows drawn high up the forehead? Yes, the one that was hidden away in their celebrated basement by the ghost-hunting couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren. Well, making Annabelle scary was a great idea, except she was never scary to begin with.
Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) are a young Californian couple preparing for their baby’s coming. The initial indications of evil occur after Mia wakes up in the middle of the night on hearing a shriek from their neighbour’s home. Once it’s infused with evil, and particularly after the advent of the baby, the doll plays on Mia’s mind, as the devil force looks to harvest a soul.
John is the disbelieving, pragmatic dad and Mia is the understandably distraught and gradually paranoid mom. Gas stoves light themselves and turntables play on their own. Apparently, demons love their burnt popcorn with some smokin’ hot classic rock.
Annabelle’s overall effect could have been enhanced with a more ominous score, as a big part of a horror film’s psychological impact lies in its music. Annabelle alights on most horror tropes but comes across as a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Still, it will give you your money’s worth, while not really serving you anything too memorable (or scary) as some of the other, more sinister horror films we’ve seen in the last few years.
