ANNABELLE

Last October, I did a review on the film "The Conjuring", and after re-watching it again, it actually got better than the first time I saw it, which was in theaters with a heckling audience. The premise while cliche, is still creative; the atmosphere was scary and unsettling; the characters are likable; there were a few scary moments; and the climax is the best part of the whole entire movie. In fact, I have a feeling that this film will slowly become a horror classic as time goes by. Ok, the jump scares are not good; the premise is nothing new; and rating it R for being too scary, was an over exaggerated excuse for people to see this film. But with that said, it's still a good horror flick. After the success of the film, a Prequel just recently came out and that film is...
  

Remember that scary Doll in "The Conjuring" that did very little and was barely in the movie, but still left an impression on you; they made a prequel about her.  If you're thinking that this film will be about the nurses encounter with Annabelle as mentioned and shown in "The Conjuring", well it's not. I'm not saying that would make this movie good, because basically we already know the story about their encounter with the Doll. So if it's not about the nurses encounter with the doll, then what's the film about? Well, how about before the nurses ever received the doll? Wait, what!? You mean, there was already a scary encounter with the Doll!? The story about Annabelle in "The Conjuring" was such a solid scary story, that it didn't feel necessary to make a story before the events. If anything, a story of Annabelle before the classic horror encounter not only seemed unnecessary, but sounds like a cheap idea to give this famous freaky doll more screen-time to attract audiences to see the film, so the studio can make money off of a film with very little effort, and that's exactly what this film did!



Annabelle's victims are a married couple who are expecting a baby, and the wife (Annabelle Wallis) receives a lifeless doll from her husband (Ward Horton). Now the acting isn't bad, it's just boring and forgettable. In fact, the characters themselves aren't that interesting either. In my review for "The Conjuring", I didn't find the characters all that interesting either, but I still found them likable enough to fear for their lives; and after my recent viewing of "The Conjuring", they really have grown on me, especially the ghost hunting duo! The characters in this film were already boring, bland, and cliche from the minute I was introduced to them. I found them so boring that I didn't care who lived or died, as long as the baby is safe, I'm cool with these characters dying. The only character that the film tries to make an interesting character with a back story is Alfre Woodard's character, and even she's as dull as the rest of the characters. Her back story and the way it was told, wasn't effecting either, it was just boring and felt forced into the plot.



Apparently the doll is not possessed by an inhuman demon spirit as mentioned in "The Conjuring", it's possessed by a killer from a cult. Really, so were the expert ghost hunters wrong in "The Conjuring"; can any demon posse that doll; or did the writers, just not care about continuity and just thought that people will just buy into it, and forget all about what was said in "The Conjuring"? Whatever the reason is, it doesn't matter because the scares in this film are very poor! I wasn't expecting the doll to walk around killing people, while talking, but I expected a little more creativity. Most of the shots with the Doll are just her sitting, and lying around doing nothing, but look scary. It worked in "The Conjuring" because the film didn't abuse it, but here, the creepy shots of Annabelle are abused so much that it loses everything that made the doll scary! The Doll does a few things that we don't see her do, but her actions are predictable, boring, and not terrifying in the least. You do see the ghost who's possessing the doll a few times, but she's not only not scary either, but she looks exactly like the girl from "The Ring". The film even tries to scare you with its jump scares, but the only reason you'll jump is because of the loud music and sound effects, while being exposed to poor imagery. The film doesn't even carry the same level of suspense, tension, and atmosphere as the previous film did, it's actually really bland and boring! As for the climax, it is NOTHING compared to the suspenseful climax in "The Conjuring"!

There's really nothing more that I can say about this film, except that it was a boring film with no creativity, no suspense, no scares, and is not entertaining in the slightest! This film was only made to cash-in on the success of "The Conjuring", and the popularity of this creepy doll, and boy does this film show it! It's a corporate sell out of a movie that killed a scary doll worse than what Marlon Wayan's did to the doll in "A Haunted House 2"!

RATING 0/5