Annabelle - A Movie Review
One of our main protagonists John thinks he’s found the perfect gift for his pregnant wife, Mia; a vintage doll in a beautiful white dress. However, the couple’s delight doesn’t last long: One terrible night, devil worshippers invade their home and launch a violent attack against the couple. When the cultists try to summon a demon, they smear their blood on the nursery wall and drip blood on Mia’s doll, turning the former innocent object of a child into a conduit for ultimate evil.
Horror is one of my favourite movie genres. I really wasn’t expecting to hate this as much as I did but it is astonishingly terrible. Really. I loved The Conjuring – this is nothing like The Conjuring. At all. It’s a blatant cash-grab and a terrible one at that.
There is zero tension throughout this movie. Zero suspense. Everything is reliant on close ups of the dolls face to “creep” us out and really long periods of time where NOTHING HAPPENS. Literally, it’s about this couple that we do not care about and their stupid problems which we care even less about. I don’t know if they were trying to build suspense in these scenes but in order to build suspense you actually have to make us care about the characters. Or at least have, you know, suspense; a lingering sense of danger. This had nothing.
By Ruth McGrath