It may have only been featured for a minute or two in last year’s horror hit The Conjuring, but that creepy doll in the glass case certainly made an impression. And producers noticed, rushing this a spin-off origin story to the big screen. Annabelle has a lot of potential and admittedly contains an effective jolt or two. But the human characters aren’t memorable and the film doesn’t deliver any thrills that audiences won’t have already seen.
Set in the early 1970s, the plot follows Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton), a young couple anxiously awaiting the arrival of their first child. Mia is thrilled when John gives her the downright disturbing Annabelle doll as a gift. However, the pair soon regret it after the daughter of their elderly neighbors home returns as part of a Charles Manson-like satanic cult. The psychotic visitor goes on a murder spree and eventually appears to possess Annabelle.
Sadly, anyone expecting the doll itself to start acting out will be sorely disappointed. It’s a discomforting-looking creation, but for the most part it just sits there. Instead, the film focuses on the cult woman’s demon spirit, which spends most of its time moving slowly in the background behind the principal characters. That’s all well and good, but one wonders why the filmmakers didn’t try to make the most of their title creature? Sure, Annabelle changes locations mysteriously, but it never actively does much of anything. Instead the movie resorts to the very same ghost jumps seen in films like its predecessor and the Insidious series.
As mentioned, the movie features are some strong moments. There are a couple of effective long takes that follow Mia around her home with something waiting in the shadows. A nice jolt involves the evil spirit entering through a doorframe and suddenly changing form. And there’s a fun little bit involving an elevator that just won’t leave the basement floor, the doors only opening and closing on the same level.
Still, the gags and the drama aren’t as effective when we don’t care about the people involved. And we don’t learn much about Mia and John. As written, they’re two of the blandest characters in recent memory and possess little in the way of memorable personality traits (other than an obvious appreciation of K-Tel LPs). We don’t even know why Mia likes or collects dolls in the first place – she doesn’t seem to show much interest in them during the course of the film. Alfre Woodard does add some much needed personality later in the story, but by then it all feels like a substandard plot written around two or three effective scare sequences.
The makers of Annabelle had an extraordinarily freaky-looking doll, but there’s only one single moment in which the title creation truly makes an animated impression. Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect to see it jump to life and chase its owners around the house, but boy, that would have been unforgettable. Heck, even hallucinations or visions of the porcelain monstrosity coming to life and doing strange things would have raised some hairs on the backs of necks. Instead, this movie never gets under our skin the way it should and ends up a fairly routine ghost story.