This time of year, our cinemas are visited by what can only be described as the paranormal. All at once it seems ghouls and ghosts of the most frightening nature fill the movie theater screens. Horror movies, typically flavor-of-the- month box office bombs, exhibit their ghostly nature by offering us scares we have never seen before while still managing to be utterly transparent. Wispy and insubstantial, they vanish just as quickly as they appeared, but not before inflicting the worst psychological damage of all. No matter how bad the experience of seeing the film was, none of your friends will ever believe you.
Typically the worst offenders of this paradigm are the ever-beloved, ever awful horror movie sequels. These franchises’ numbers slowly rise into the double digits like it’s some sort of sick contest. Sometimes producers get a bit clever and hide their franchises under different names, hoping people sick of horror sequels won’t catch on. Such is the case this year. Instead of the much-sought-after Paranormal Activity 72, we are visited by John R. Leonetti’s Annabelle.
A spin-off prequel to the greatly successful 2013 horror film, The Conjuring, Annabelle unfortunately suffers from the same problems many modern horror films suffer from as well. A lack of originality plagues this film. While riding on the coattails of its Exorcist-inspired forerunner, Annabelle does away with the atmosphere, intensity and intrigue that made its predecessor so appealing.
Instead, the film favors cheap jump scares and blatantly incorporates aspects of other superior horror films.
Opening with the exact same shot from the opening of The Conjuring (which hurts the film’s originality from the very beginning), the film describes the murderous and haunted rampages of the doll Annabelle, terrorizing the unwitting Form family with terrible clichés and horrid special effects.
After receiving a new doll in honor of her pregnancy, Mia Form (ironi- cally played by Annabelle Wallis) is attacked in the night by a mysterious man and woman with seemingly murderous intent. After the attackers are gunned down, the blood that falls from their bodies spills onto the doll. As a result, the souls of these villains (later revealed to be members of a Satanic cult), now possess the new doll.
Months later, after Mia’s new baby is born, the family finds itself under attack by this possessed doll who seeks to take a soul in order to summon a demon of terrible power. For this sacrifice it has chosen Mia’s daughter.
This general plot introduction immediately exposes some of the issues in this film. The film borrows elements from roughly a half-dozen other horror films and attempts to blend them together into something aiming to be greater than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately, in failing to grasp what made these other films so memorable, Annabelle only succeeds in creating a film filled to the brim with the most generic horror clichés imaginable.
Rather than create a compelling backstory for the doll’s murderous rampage, the film simply tells the story of a generic Satanic cult. This kind of cult has been seen in many horror films and, like most others, it has the stereotypical evil plans and motives of questionable intelligence (what will they do once their demon kills everyone? That’s always the real question and unfortunately is one that is rarely answered).
The haunted doll is a blatant use of the now-stereotypical “corrupted childish innocence” trope that has been overplayed in films of this type for the last 20 years. Furthermore, the doll is barely even frightening as an antagonist, offering very little screen presence and rarely conveying a sense of any real danger. I was more afraid of the booming jump-scare sound cues blasting my eardrums away than I was of any ill will this doll may have for the living.
These flaws in storytelling and presentation are merely in addition to other flaws in the film which would cripple any movie. The acting is stiff and flat which, while not unheard of in horror films by any stretch of the imagination, certainly does hurt the already banal atmosphere of the film. The film’s scares are bland enough as it is without Anabelle Willis simply reading lines off of cue cards and giving the most forced screams imaginable. The effects are silly and unconvincing, ripping even more potency away from an already horribly weak atmosphere. When the Chucky doll from the 1988 film Child’s Play is a more convincing, frightening and lifelike murder-doll than one from a film in 2014, there is clearly an issue.
Despite its apparently great legacy with The Conjuring, Annabelle unfortunately fails to deliver anything more than a bland, superficial horror film without any of the horror. Rife with wooden acting, stolen clichés, poor effects and a weak atmosphere, the film has less life than its plastic antagonist. Horror films are abundant this time of year, and I would recommend going ahead and giving this one a miss. It shouldn’t be difficult to find a superior replacement.
Overall rating: 2/5
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