Dawn of the doll
The Conjuring break-out star Annabelle finally gets a frightfully deserving origin story.
Annabelle: Creation
Director: David Sandberg
Cast: Miranda Otto, Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Anthony LaPaglia, Lulu Wilson, Grace Fulton, Philippa Coulthard, Samara Lee and Taylor Buck.
THE thought of losing a loved one is always scary. When it happens, we are often expected to accept the loss as a part of life and believe in time as the healing factor.
In Annabelle: Creation, married couple Samuel and Esther Mullins (played by Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto respectively) decide to welcome six young orphan girls into their home as a way to cope with the grief of losing their own child.
All should be well, right? Not in this movie. After the forgettable Annabelle movie released in 2014, somehow it was decided that the haunted porcelain doll and breakout star from James Wan’s The Conjuring film series, deserved another origin story.
If you don’t remember anything about her, Annabelle likes to lurk in the dark and can scarily harm unsuspecting victims without lifting a finger. She’s classy that way.
This time, Annabelle ramps up her jerk factor by terrorising the living daylights out of orphans, particularly polio-stricken Janice (Talitha Bateman).
It begins with a note written in red crayon that says “Find me” and then all hell breaks loose.
Annabelle makes her presence felt with sudden appearances everywhere, from under a bed to the dinner table. She makes slow creeping footstep sounds. The worst is when she takes on the form of another child to ask for help.
The sense of dread is definitely overwhelming in this new Annabelle movie. Though she appears to be only moving in the background or underneath a blanket, it’s enough to send shivers down your spine.
Director David Sandberg of Lights Out fame makes good use of the dark empty spaces in the movie for all kinds of unsuspecting entities to pop.
The best part is, there are more creepy surprises in store as Annabelle has friends in different shapes and forms to play along with her. Moral of the story: don’t trust any item in this movie.
Sure, some things may be baffling about Annabelle: Creation. The orphans seem to ignore one too many warning signs about the house they live in.
Just like characters in other The Conjuring movies, everybody is OK to sleep alone after a night of terror and without any form of divine protection. Talk about optimism.
I also feel that the movie didn’t actually need to show an actual demon-looking being to scare its viewers because it just takes away the mystery. Nothing is scarier than the unseen.
Still, it’s worth going along on this rollercoaster ride of a horror movie just to see Janice’s best friend Linda (played by a very gutsy Lulu Wilson, who was previously the creepy kid in Ouija: Origin Of Evil) take matters into her own hands.
If you really hate Annabelle, then you’d want to cheer for Linda to get rid of that creepy doll once and for all. Will she succeed? Be a doll and catch the show.
I also like how, during an unsettling moment when Linda is stuck in a closet with Annabelle staring at her, she deals with it just by turning the doll’s head in another direction. That’s my girl.
You’ll also learn that there is something scarier than losing a loved one, such as having a malevolent spirit manipulate your cherished memories of a loved one for its own gain.
Now that’s something that’ll keep you awake at night.