Annabelle
Rating: 2/5
By: Nathaniel Simpson
Coming off the success from James Wan's highly successful horror film The Conjuring, a movie about the terrifying doll named Annabelle that was introduced in the opening scene of the film makes perfect sense. The doll garnered lots of attention after being in the film, and gave people nightmares and made them curious about the doll that resides in the Warren's house. Therefore, John R. Leonetti helms the first movie about the possessed doll, releasing a film that is nowhere near as good as the film before it, presenting a bland and uninspired horror movie that is simply a bore to watch.
The film revolves around Mia (Annabelle Wallis), who is expecting her first child with her husband, John (Ward Horton). They move into a nice house in a beautiful neighborhood, and John gives Mia a doll that she has been looking for to put in their child's nursery. Everything seems normal and calm, until their neighbor's estranged daughter arrives and brutally kills her parents before attacking Mia and John. Now reeling from their attack, they soon learn that the spirit of the daughter is now haunting Mia and John, and has placed itself in the center of the doll. They must now figure out how to save their family and break the curse the doll has on them, before it's too late.
With the inclusion of Annabelle in this new horror series, she seems like the perfect idea for a horror movie. She is creepy as hell, and simply has a lot of potential to do a lot throughout her own solo film. But, Leonetti simply doesn't utilize any of the positives he is given and decides to tell this very bland horror film instead. It seems like a crossover of Rosemary's Baby and The Conjuring, but does every aspect worse than the two other films I mentioned did. They decide to revolve the story around a woman and her newborn baby, but nothing they have to say matters much at all. For some odd reason, they put the concept of the Annabelle doll on the back burner and want to instead showcase this pregnancy from hell and how bad cults are.
It's unfortunate as I think the cast and the filmmakers do have a lot of potential here. Wallis is actually decent throughout this film, and some of the set design and cinematography/lighting choice are quite nice. But, they practically ruin it by adding in cheap jumpscares that made me roll my eyes rather than recoil in horror. As I have mentioned numerous times before in other reviews for modern horror films, filmmakers that work in this genre have seemingly lost their way, and think random jumpscares that neither make sense nor are very scary is the key ingredient to making a successful horror picture.
Even though there are some elements in this film I do like and can see Wan's influence in, such as the devil figure that appears, the movie as a whole is just bland and boring. It seems like they work their way through the movie, but don't really do anything that is inspiring or very entertaining. There are numerous good ideas that they wanted to inject into the story, but they decide to ignore most of them for some odd reason. It's incredibly frustrating as I wanted a lot more from Annabelle's first solo movie, but they simply put her on the back burner and seemingly use her as an afterthought. It genuinely felt like they took a random horror movie off the shelf, and added Annabelle into it whenever they could. I really like the ingredients for this movie, but the final product simply doesn't work.
Annabelle is simply creepy enough to keep her as a modern horror icon, and they owe no thanks to this downright poor attempt to tell a story about her. Leonetti had everything he needed, and doesn't utilize what Wan set up for him. It's very unfortunate they couldn't have crafted a better movie for her, but thankfully (spoiler alert), the second installment does her justice.
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