Annabelle a doll on a roll
Seven films in and this Conjuring universe is still showing no signs of imploding. The Conjuring (2013) was based on a chapter from the lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who ran a cottage industry during the 1970s and 80s pretending to be paranormal investigators and demonologists, specialising in ‘‘cleansing’’ haunted houses.
It was a harmless enough sideshow, I guess. And a great way to sell paperbacks and film rights to a generation who had flocked to see The Exorcist and its imitators and just wanted to feel a little mystery and dread in their own lives.
The Annabelle films are a spinoff series, based around the shenanigans a possessed doll gets up to whenever some poor fool comes into her orbit.
Annabelle Comes Home opens in 1971, with the battered doll being driven to the Warrens’ and put behind lock and key in the Warrens’ in-house museum of allegedly evil trinkets.
There’s a sign on the – glass – door saying ‘‘Extremely dangerous. Do Not Open Ever’’, which we trust will be completely ignored in the
first 20 minutes or so. Sure enough, the Warrens head away for the weekend, leaving 12-year-old daughter Judy in the care of a teenage babysitter and her slightly dubious bestie.
Pretty soon, Annabelle’s doing her popping-up-where-you-weren’texpecting-her trick, accompanied by a demon bride, various walking dead and – wahey! – a sodding great werewolf in the garden.
Listen, any seven-film series that can gross $US1.7 billion – and counting – on an investment of less than $US150 million is doing something very right.
Of course these films are formulaic but they are also beautifully shot, impeccably designed and more than competently acted.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have terrific chemistry as the Warrens. And 13-year-old McKenna Grace (I, Tonya ) is brilliant as young Judy, giving a note-perfect reading of a disturbed but heroic child.
I like a film that knows what it was put here to do and does it in a way that respects its audience. Annabelle Comes Home achieves that – and more.