Conjuring up a surprise franchise
Nine-hundred million dollar movie franchises are thin on the ground.
Even as Hollywood takes fewer and fewer chances with its investments, hitting the billiondollar jackpot, as The Conjuring series surely will, is still a rare event.
And to get there off the back of a mildly shonky and undernourished premise, such as the widely discredited claims of a couple of self-proclaimed paranormal investigators who were last active in the 1980s, seems a longer shot than most.
Yet, here we are. Sitting at the round table with Miranda Otto, Anthony LaPaglia, Stephanie Sigman and a pair of truly astonishing child actors, talking with apparent seriousness about Annabelle: Creation. Which is the fourth film in The Conjuring universe, with three more – at least – to come.
LaPaglia in particular is overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the project. He’s been a working actor for decades and has carved himself a formidable and much storied CV. But LaPaglia hadn’t much experience of horror. Not in the 21st century anyway.
‘‘It blew me away’’ he says. ‘‘I don’t know what I was expecting when I read the script, but they gave me a guy who was so much more than just a cut-out waiting his turn to get knocked off.’’
LaPaglia plays Samuel Mullins. He’s husband to Miranda Otto’s trouble Esther. LaPaglia plays Samuel as a distant, brooding figure, clearly still in immense pain over a past tragedy.
‘‘I got the guy, y’know. He comes across as a bit of a bastard I know. But there’s enough writing there so the audience will understand him and hopefully have a bit of empathy for him. It was a real character for sure.’’
The Conjuring, Annabelle and company broke through to boxoffice success the old-fashioned way. They are just smart films, with a few new ideas and a lot of old ones ruthlessly well flung up on the screen in quick succession.
The set up – the first 20 to 30 minutes of the films – introduces the characters, the setting and the props that will be deployed in various unspeakable ways.
After which, the films roll out as a procession of set-pieces, as characters are cornered and terrified by some nebulous and illdefined evil force, often trapped inside an improbably gruesome child’s toy.
We don’t question the ambulatory doll in Annabelle any more than we questioned Regan’s rotating head in The Exorcist .We just enjoy the ride. And Annabelle: Creation, like most of its stablemates, makes it pretty easy to do so.
Director David Sandberg doesn’t go in for much CGI, or even gore. Annabelle: Creation might only be his second feature film (after the impressively shot Lights Out), but Sandberg has brought a very old-fashioned set of values to the party.
The film simply looks and sounds like a classic. Every set, prop and stitch of costume is perfectly and authentically done. In the moments when you’re not jumping out of your skin or muttering at some inanity in the plot, take a good look at the depth of detail and design on screen.
Also helping, a lot, is a top-shelf cast who can paper over some the story’s more gaping credibility gaps simply by being watchable and committed.
Otto and LaPaglia might be the big mainstream names, but the work of young actors Talitha Bateman and Lulu Wilson, as the two girls who bear most of the demonic brunt, was what wowed me. Lulu Wilson has seven years in the industry behind her already. She intends to be a writer/ director. As she says, ‘‘women are under-represented behind the camera’’.
Last year, she wrote a script for an episode of Stranger Things and sent it to the show’s producers. She is 11 years old. Her pairing with Bateman (The 5th Wave) gives Annabelle: Creation a solid core of emotional empathy and female empowerment that hasn’t always been a defining feature of the genre.
It all adds up to a series entry and a genre film that, while you might never be a fan, at least made me an admirer.