Unlike most other horror flicks, Annabelle can be the perfect prescription for the faint of heart. Not quite as spine-chilling as The Conjuring, the scare quotient in this prequel sort of creeps up on you - and almost never jars you. Set in California during the time when occult and satanic sacrifices were as cool as Woodstock, Annabelle has neat performances and great set detailing that make up for a contrived end. The movie begins with a group of nurses telling retro ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren about how the doll Annabelle has freaked them out to the point of calling for help. And that’s practically all you get to see of the pair who made The Conjuring tick, until the pre-credits scene rolls.
So we know that the doll is pure evil. That much is now evident even to the folks who haven’t seen it wreaking havoc in the previous movie. And so we’re introduced to Mia (Annabella Wallis) and John Gordon, who’re on the cusp of having their first child. Things go awry when John gifts the over-lipsticked Annabelle to his wife, who adds it to her collection of not-so-cuddly toys. The neighbours get killed, the house is set on fire and Mia is all but convinced that some dark force is at hand trying to get at her unborn daughter. Even after they move away once their daughter is born, the strange incidents don’t cease. Mia is stretched to the point where she even resorts to going to the priest for help, and that’s where things go off the rails, for the movie that is.
After you’ve come to fear a doll who shuts doors, fuses light bulbs and speaks in spooky whispers for the most part, it’s not quite nice contending with a black, form-shifting creature who moves like the scourge from the Spiderman movies. The charm of subtlly spooking people with unnatural occurrences quickly gives way for more mainstream scare tactics, which could have worked — if only people around hadn’t kept laughing in tandem. It might have been a good deal worse if Mia’s pure expressions of terror hadn’t lent a tinge of seriousness to the spooking. But then again, there’s only so much a doll can do, right?