In late '60s suburbia, ultra-square couple doctor John Form (Ward Horton) and his doll collector wife Mia (Annabelle Wallis) are expecting their first child.
John presents Mia with a vintage porcelain doll we shall call Annabelle for the sake of expediency (
even though no name is actually used for the doll in the film).
Soon after this, their neighbour's house, and then their own, is attacked by a pair of crazed Satanic cultists, the female being shot dead by police while clutching the doll we now call Annabelle.
Mia begins to think their house is cursed, a belief given strength by a fire that nearly claims her life, but does lead to the birth of their child, Lia.
The family relocates to an apartment building, but the demonic forces follow them and Mia finds herself hounded by an assortment of evil creatures.
All the time, they are being watched by Annabelle; even though John had thrown her in the trash before the fire gutted their first home, she finds her way into their belongings when they move house.
Annabelle is a prequel to
The Conjuring, supposedly fleshing out the backstory of the haunted doll, but really only cobbling together a story to explain how she got into the hands of the nurses who appear in the opening sequence of
The Conjuring.
I'm guessing an actual explanation for her malevolence is forthcoming in 2017's
Annabelle: Creation.
Unfortunately, this early expansion of
The Conjuring Universe isn't written or directed by anyone connected with the original movie, and lacking the presence of the Warrens or analogues,
Annabelle is a much more mundane and mainstream horror movie.
The film's problems are compounded by the fact that while the demonic entities in the actual
Conjuring movies obey a kind of logic that makes them convincing in the context, Gary Dauberman's script - under the direction of John R. Leonetti - for
Annabelle just throws special effects-heavy creatures at our protagonists on a whim.
While frequently dipping into the same well of horror movie clichés,
Annabelle lacks the internal consistency and strong characters of
The Conjuring.
Instead, it's a hodgepodge of ideas, with allusions to the Manson Family murders (
the film starts with the trial of The Family as a backdrop), and stereotypical Hollywood black magic and Satanism, mixed in with
The Conjuring's take on ghosts and demons, all somehow tied in to this evil doll.
And what can be said of the demonic doll herself? Well, firstly, mint, straight-out-of-the-box, she's a frakking evil looking creation so I can't understand why any sane person would want her in the house in the first place.
But, secondly, even once she starts acting as a conduit for dark forces, she actually does very little.
If she moves at all it's off-screen. In fact, for the longest time she's not even on screen, and her connection to the various ghosts and monsters that appear seems tenuous at best.
Imagine if
Chucky had never actually moved during
Child's Play and you'll get some idea how naff the doll is as a source of jeopardy.
Although she looks terrifying, she's a lot more effective as a tool of menace when people are talking about her than when we actually see her...
doing nothing.
As much as I welcome the idea of a shared universe for
The Conjuring franchise,
Annabelle really adds very little to the joint mythology.
The film's almost like a self-contained horror movie that was tacked on to
The Conjuring bandwagon as an afterthought.
