John R. Leonetti’s Annabelle, the prequel to 2013’s supernatural hit The Conjuring, may succeed at raising a few neck hairs but instead it nearly put me to sleep.
The film begins in 1969 with a couple, Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton), preparing for their soon to be born child. After a fight, John gives Mia a sinister looking doll named Annabelle to add to her growing collection. The paranormal activity does not start until a satanic couple breaks into their home and attempt to murder both of them as part of a satanic ritual.
After the eerie paranormal activity kicks into high gear, they decide to move into an apartment and throw Annabelle away in hopes that it’ll stop, but when Annabelle appears in their apartment, the doll brings a demonic force that terrorizes the couple.
This movie was quite the disappointment especially when compared to its predecessor, The Conjuring, which lacked the corniness that was extremely prominent in Annabelle. At least The Conjuring had scenes that were scary and unique. Its failure could be attributed to the change of the director from James Wan to John R. Leonetti and new writers.
The writing itself was terrible. The conversations were boring and completely unrealistic. Listening to Mia and John talk to each other made me cringe with annoyance. An argument that they have at the beginning of the film about becoming new parents was hard to follow, not believable and badly performed. The acting did not help the writing at all. Horton’s performance was by far the worst. Woodard and Wallis, however, did a decent job considering the material they were working with.
The film’s scare tactics such as wide shots filled with dark corners, sudden loud bangs and eerie music were unimaginative. Within the first 30 minutes, the most frightening scene occurred, but the rest of the film did not live up to it. The rest of the film was very predictable and lacked terror. Scenes that were meant to be chilling lacked innovation and have been exhausted in horror films before such as jiffy pop exploding on the stove, music turning on with out explanation, TV turning static, electricity going out and other reproduced cliché so-called horror.
In most paranormal films, the image of the supernatural creature ruins what has been building up inside the audience’s imagination through out the movie and Annabelle is no exception. The demon that is supposed to be haunting looks more like a stuffed ram than a demon. Some things are better off unseen and this most definitely is one of them.
Annabelle lacked the suspense and fear that I love about horror films. It left me unsatisfied and unscathed. Maybe if the film had the same great team as The Conjuring the results would have been much better.