By Brett Blake A spin-off/”sidequel”/companion piece to last year’s box office hit THE CONJURING, ANNABELLE can’t even begin to live up to its predecessor, either in effectiveness or sheer entertainment value, but it’s not at all a total loss, and there are some moments that are wonderfully creepy. It’s not without at least one major (huge!) flaw (which I’ll get to eventually), but as a mid-level chiller, it’s more than passable. Centrally, the plot concerns a young married couple in the late 1960s, Mia (Annabelle Wallis… yeah, the lead actress of a film called ANNABELLE is herself called Annabelle; a freakish coincidence) and John (Ward Horton), who are shortly expecting the birth of their first child. Before that joyous occasion, however, they are attacked in their home by a pair of Satanic cult worshipers; they survive the attack, but soon find eerie occurrences transpiring in their home, occurrences that seem to be centered around a particularly creepy doll in Mia’s collection. The “evil doll” horror subgenre is one that was once quite prevalent, but has since kind of faded away. You had the CHILD’S PLAY series, of course, and even things like 1978’s MAGIC and 1987’s DOLLS are admirable offerings (the original iteration of the classic TWILIGHT ZONE television series had the famous “Talky Tina” episode, which remains one of the best of the series). Personally, I’m a fan of doll horror, so ANNABELLE struck me as a decently effective entry in that subgenre. Strangely, given its subject matter, the film’s primary influence is not any of the media mentioned above, but rather Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY; there are more than a few nods to that movie in here, from the main character’s name (Mia, after ROSEMARY star Mia Farrow), to the anxieties she feels surrounding motherhood, to the apartment complex in which the bulk of the story is set. None of this is a bad thing, per se, and the nods are affectionate and unobtrusive in a way I appreciated. The usage of a cult attack as the backdrop for the story is interesting, as it’s an angle that conjures up mental images of the likes of Charles Manson and his followers. Keeping the story set in the late 1960s allows the filmmakers to play with that kind of imagery in a fairly canny way, and the sequence in which Mia and John are attacked is terrifically staged. Indeed, there are several such setpieces (for lack of a better term) that are, frankly, excellent little works of suspense and terror put together by director John R. Leonetti. Yes, the movie frequently relies on loud noises and orchestral bangs to get the audience to jump (THE CONJURING was not free of this, either, but the jump scares there were far more memorable than the ones found here), but there are also plenty of moments that utilize more subtle methods of framing and composition, and which are refreshingly fun. One scene, in particular, which involves Mia going down to the basement of the apartment building, is one of the best singular horror sequences of recent years; we’re shown just enough of the supernatural “presence” attached to the Annabelle doll to provide a creepy thrill, but not so much that it becomes overwrought or silly. It’s a great section of the film, and the clear high point. The entire movie, for the most part, has a very nice, slick look. The cinematography brings a clean and crisp flavor that is a marked contrast to the kind of green-brown aesthetic we often find in cheap horror films, and the period setting helps the movie to look richer and more expensive than it probably really is. Actors Wallis and Horton look suitably sixties-ish, and they make an unusually appealing duo; so often in (bad) horror movies, the audience is saddled with following terrible characters, but Wallis and Horton retain likability at almost every turn… even when their characters make some occasionally questionable decisions. So what’s the problem? Well, ANNABELLE’s biggest issue arrives in the form of its ending. I’ll not spoil it explicitly, but I do need to attempt to articulate why it’s such a big letdown, so if you’re ultra-sensitive to somebody even tap-dancing around spoilers, skip down to the next paragraph. Chiefly, the ending sets up that the demonic force attached to the Annabelle doll has a very specific goal/desire, and rather than finding some cool, unique way to thwart the demon, the filmmakers go in a different direction, one that results in a head-scratching conclusion that is - I think - meant to somehow be seen as narratively and thematically satisfying, but is - in reality - hugely underwhelming and a truly puzzling choice on which to end the movie. The filmmakers want to have it both ways (a happy AND scary ending both at the same time), and it really falls flat. It’s a big miscalculation, and it drops the movie down a couple of notches, because up to that point, it’s a pretty fun ride. In the final analysis ANNABELLE is nowhere even close to as bad as a cheap cash-in probably should be (and make no mistake, this is absolutely an attempt by the studio to quickly and inexpensively cash-in on the success of last year’s THE CONJURING while we wait for the true sequel to come out next year), and even with its disappointment of an ending taken into account, the big scare sequences work well enough (and in some cases they work like gangbusters) to warrant (at least) a marginal recommendation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|