Movie Review: “Annabelle” (Rated R)

Warner Bros. (New Line)(NEW YORK) — When your relatively low-budget horror film grosses $318 million in worldwide box office receipts, you better believe there’s going to be a sequel — or in the case of 2013’s The Conjuring, a prequel.
 
Annabelle is the origin story of the creepy-looking, possessed doll that terrified audiences in The Conjuring. It’s the 1960s, and John and Mia (Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis) are newlyweds.  Mia is very pregnant and John is in his last year of medical school.  Guess what Mia likes to collect?  If you answered “dolls,” you win two vials of holy water and one routine exorcism. John presents Mia with a large white box, inside which is a large, creepy-looking doll that Mia really wanted for her collection.  Guess what Mia names it?  Right again.
 
Mia loves Annabelle.  That is, until a cult member breaks into John and Mia’s house and commits suicide in the unborn baby’s nursery, staining Annabelle with blood.  After that, Mia’s not quite as in love with Annabelle as she once was, especially when weird things start happening in the house: the sewing machine turns on by itself, the house starts making strange noises, and something ignites all the burners on the stove and starts a fire.  It’s enough to induce labor, which it does, and a near tragedy turns into a little miracle named Leah.
 
Mia and John take baby Leah and move to an apartment in Pasadena, but all the crazy stuff that happened in their house follows them there.  That’s when Annabelle starts to make grown men jump, flail their arms and smack you in the shoulder. At least, that’s what happened to me when the guy sitting next to me nearly went airborne out of his seat.  And that was just when they dimmed the theater lights.
 
As scary as so many people thought The Conjuring was, I never felt the slightest bit freaked out. Annabelle, on the other hand, with its creepy pacing, rendering of demons, sudden audio stabs and frightening visuals – including the doll itself – occasionally sent shivers down my skeptical spine.  What this movie does so effectively is put baby Leah in danger. The demon is after the baby’s soul, and the film is presented in such a way to make you feel the demon may very well get exactly what it wants.
 
Three-and-a-half out of five stars.

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