Annabelle (2014)

Annabelle was a sizable box office smash upon its release in 2014 and serves as a sort of prequel to the critical hit The Conjuring.  While Annabelle was not nearly as well received as The Conjuring I still had plenty of reasons to want to check it out.  First of all, I’m a horror buff.  Second of all, dolls can be kind of creepy (Chucky anyone?).  And finally, could it really be as bad as critics were saying it was?  Luckily I found myself enjoying myself more often than not during this movie, but that isn’t to say it’s nearly as great as the movie it is a prequel to or that it’s even anything particularly special.  In fact, I can absolutely see why this movie was so poorly received by critics because of how safe it seems.  Annabelle is a very formulaic and tame horror movie that doesn’t offer anything new to the genre and isn’t necessarily the most effectively made movie but still manages to be pretty creepy and entertaining throughout.

Remember that creepy doll in The Conjuring that so much emphasis was put on?  Well Annabelle is the movie that gives the doll it’s origin story and background.  Don’t be afraid to see this if you haven’t seen The Conjuring, however, since this movie makes perfect sense on its own.  The premise is simple:  John and Mia Form are a young couple who are expecting their first child and as a gift Mia receives a large, fancy doll (she collects dolls).  In a surprisingly sudden turn of events, their home is invaded by people involved with a cult and ultimately it ends with a girl named Annabelle Higgens (and her boyfriend) attempting to kill John and Mia but die in the process.  Annabelle dies holding this new doll.  Not long after that things start to get “spooky” as Mia (who has to stay at home most of the time) starts experiencing scary visions of demons, unexpectedly opening doors, and other typical ghost movie occurrences.  Before too long the couple realizes the doll is a sort of conduit for these evil forces.  If this sounds scary to you, it probably will be.  If you’ve seen a million horror movies, there really isn’t anything surprising here.  While I found many of the scenes very scary overall the premise is sort of tired and nothing that happens took me off guard.  Not to say the story is bad, it’s just very by-the-books.

The one that seems to plague horror movies these days is a constant bombardment of jump scares or false scares.  Unfortunately Annabelle features a large number of these, but some of them did take me off guard.  It isn’t hard to say that jump scares do not equal a truly scary movie but since this style seems so popular these days I think a lot of people will be really freaked out by a lot of this.  Also, a lot of the scenes (particularly at night) actually are quite atmospheric and had me tense for a bit of the time.  As a horror movie, Annabelle hits all of the familiar notes.  It’s easy to follow, contains a lot of jump scares and manages to be tense in a number of scenes. Still, I’m not the biggest fan of such predictable direction in horror movies so by the end I was ready for it to be over (even despite it’s R rating I found the entire movie quite tame).

Maybe it sounds like I’m being pretty harsh on this movie, but I actually found it pretty enjoyable overall.  Like I previous stated, a lot of the scenes were tense and some of the jump scares took me off guard (and not all of them were “fake” scares, either).  As a prequel to the Conjuring it half-works by exploring the same thematic concepts of believing in the paranormal and fighting evil with belief in its existence.  In the horror movie world these are frequently explored concepts that seem to emerge every year.  In that regard, Annabelle works quite well and will most definitely satisfy its core audience.  People expecting a more progressive or unique movie are going to be disappointed.  People expecting greatness or who hate this format are going to find a lot to loathe in Annabelle.

In the end, I actually had a lot of fun with Annabelle.  As long as you don’t think too hard about it or try to analyze it too seriously, there’s a lot of spooky fun to be had.  I don’t think this movie is nearly as bad as some critics made it out to be and the overall negative consensus is simply a result of people who are tired of this structure.  That doesn’t imply that anything is inherently wrong with how these movies are made since clearly a lot of people went to see this and enjoyed it.  While Annabelle doesn’t re-write the book on horror or offer anything that I think will be truly remembered, it stands as a fun horror flick that works best in a dark room with a group of friends.

6/10