Director: David F. Sandberg
Release Date: 2017
Running Time: 1hr 49 minutes
Genre: Horror
Rating: 15
Format: Sky Movies
Synopsis:
12 years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, where they soon become the target of the dollmakers possessed creation, Annabelle.
Based on the terrifying true story about a haunted doll named "Annabelle", that still to this day is kept locked away in a museum owned by real life Paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The most disappointing thing about this film is the fact that none of it is actually based on the true story of Annabelle Higgins. Higgins was murdered and left to rot in a field, none of which is ever mentioned or shown in the movie. Although it ties in with "Annabelle" and "The Conjuring" fairly well, it also steers away from it's terrifying originality. I was terribly dissapointed to know that director James Wan would not be returning to direct "Annabelle" or its prequel. Unfortunately like many horror movies these days, it gets caught up in the hype of Hollywood, filmmakers claim that their film is based on a true story, very rarely are they ever. More often than not, it is done as a publicity stunt.
It's a shame viewers will get more of an adrenaline rush from the documentary on Annabelle Higgins, rather than a movie, that really had the potential to tell the horrifying story in great detail. The movie starts off exceptionally good, your introduced to characters and shown a backstory, it however doesn't take long for the movie to go downhill very quickly. Director David Sandberg has relied on far too many jump scares and predicality, that viewers are left working out the puzzle before they've even been handed it. Understandably this may be why director James Wan turned down the movie, due to it's very poorly written script. The haunted doll that Annabelle is thought to possess in real life was in fact a Raggedy Ann doll, why Sandberg thought the need to change it to a wooden doll is anyone's guess.
Lulu Wilson and Talitha Bateman star as young orphans Linda and Janice, inseparable best friends with a love for dolls. Both deliver very good performances considering the script they were given to work with. It's unfortunate that a few scenes made absolutely no sense, or had nothing to do with the story itself. In one scene a scarecrow comes to life and chases after the orphans girls. Why? It was added purely for the scare factor, which considering the film is a horror makes sense, right? Yes, to a degree, it's sad that all it really did though was make for a very cheesy and irrelevant scene, that had nothing to do with the plot. This movie had so much potential, it was really let down by the script and it's execution.
The lighting department and set designers are what really make this film work. Although the doll isn't authentic in the way it looks, it's still incredibly creepy too look at. It's unfortunate that director David Sandberg essentially stole a few ideas from James Wan's incredible thriller "Insidious", the demon that lives within the doll looks remarkably like the demon shown in the "Insidious" franchise. Although the CGI is terrific, there was no originality. Sandberg has relied far too much on jump scares and the ideas of other filmmakers to produce a movie that he hoped would be the same quality as "The Conjuring", I'm sorry to say that it was nowhere near as good. James Wan knows how to thrill audiences psychologically, Sandberg still has a long way to go if he really wants to thrill his viewers. Disappointing.
2.5/5 stars
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