Alright I was looking for some images to put up in this article…and DAMN! If you think the doll Annabelle (from The Conjuring and the recent movie) is creepy, look at the cosplays. I mean who’d want to cosplay a creepy as fuck ceramic doll??? The reason why Aliens haven’t contacted us yet is getting pretty clear. Yes! Fellow Earthlings, Y U DO ALL DIS??!! I’m not even sure if I should even write this article, even Google doesn’t give a flying fuck about this shitty doll and the movie (Yes, prepare yourself for some Butthurt poopsie, you’ll get more…oh but pleases don’t curse me!!!). So I’m sitting in my room, depressed as fuck, batshit angry at shit around me and you know what? I’ll make this movie my punching bag. Why, you ask? Well I spent some goodass hard-earned money on the movie and well…yeah, read further.
Annabelle is both a prequel and spinoff to last year’s The Conjuring by James Wan (of Saw fame). Yeah see, here lies the problem and see what my problem is that The Conjuring was as scary as The Teletubbies and they’re not scary, not one bit. Though acclaimed to some extent, The Conjuring made most of my friends go “HOLY SHIT! THAT MOVIE’S SO AWESEOM!!!” but of course, that didn’t happen to me. The only horror movie that’s ever gotten to me is The Exorcist, only because I was 4-5 years old at the time I saw it for the first time (and you don’t even know the details brah), but now it’s a complete laugh riot for me. Which reminds me of James Wan, a guy I used to like a lot because of Saw, but then he came up with Saw II, which was pretty cool, then came Saw III (watchable), but then he went total apeshit and came up with Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, and the latest Saw 3D, I know. And as I look at his wiki page…he’s directing Fast & Furious 7 (more like, Cars, Cars, Dom, the Rock; no Paul Walker jokes though…I loved him :’( )K. But Annabelle is directed by John R. Leonetti, the director of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (:|), yes…that guy. Oh, and yeah I saw the movie a week back but…yeah who cares?
Getting back to the topic of the article, the movie starts off with a quote from…I don’t remember this part. Then we can see similar faces of the nurses that were shown to be suffering from this creep of a doll in The Conjuring, and a silhouette of Patrick Wilson and (the ever beautiful) Vera Farmiga’s hair too. I just remembered, good movies are those that affect you, make you question things, question life and all that shizzz. Watching Annabelle in that theatre filled with college girls (not including me) I was left with a rather intriguing question, one that still remains unanswered: ‘When did Horror turn into Comedy?’ …No, it’s just that during the movie I was either expecting (read praying) for something awesome to happen or laughing hysterically at all the girls and guys screaming or jumping from their seats in terror (there was someone sitting behind me, reading the Hanuman Chalisa, :| :| :| ). It’s a funny movie indeed.
Oh wait, No No No, that’s not the bottomline! Moving on to the movie really…We can see newly pregnant Mia (don’t know who she is but she is familiar, Hmmm…interestingly her name’s Annabelle Wallis…) and her husband (let’s call him Almost Nicholas Hoult) attending mass at…well, a church, and we see Jay Twistle (that guy from The Pursuit of Happyness, I don’t remember the name of his character in this movie) and his wife. It’s revealed that the Twistle guy’s daughter had run off a year earlier (totally unrelated, I know). And in-between moments of shit misunderstandings (not too serious though) and ‘oh that sweet joy of love’ between Almost Nicholas Hoult and Mia there’s nothing really worth watching. But this is when we meet the creepy doll as a part of the movie plot itself; Almost Nicholas Hoult gifts Mia the Annabelle doll and the look on Mia’s face is priceless, after all she’d been searching for it for months (yeah, what’s wrong with people?)
The good part starts around the time when the Twistle guy’s daughter returns one night with one of her ‘satanic cult’ associates to kill the Higgins (yeah…that’s what Twistle’s name is). Mia and Almost Nicholas Hoult get outta their house to check on their neighbors and end up being assaulted themselves. Oh and the Higgins girl’s name is Annabelle (so that’s why they mentioned her earlier). The police arrive at the scene (pretty fast for even movie police) and shoot Annabelle’s male accomplice but are unable to do anything with our precious Annabelle as she’s already locked herself in the unborn kiddy’s room. She commits suicide eventually, but not before performing a supposedly demonic summoning ritual of sorts (purely my speculation). Oh, and she’s seen holding the doll…yes, total creepiness ensues. Yeah I know, this scene is the entire teaser trailer of the movie (no lesson learnt from The Conjuring).
After this incident the family starts experiencing strange incidents relating to the doll and other things in the house. Mia hates the doll and wants the creepy doll thrown out and the good husband Almost Nicholas Hoult fulfils the wish. So…Oh wait the baby (who’s in the tummy) too gets attacked in the process of the assault, but is alright…and godammit as cute as the god of cuteness itself! Oh wait…she’s born a bit later (forgive my botched up memory I’m pizza-drunk as I write this). So before she’s born the house is supposedly set on fire by demonic forces (instant popcorn), and there’s a pretty awesome scene in which Mia who’s fallen to the floor dramatically gets pulled back (with great force) to the fire as she’s trying to escape. This is one of the few good scenes in the movie. This leads to the birth of ‘cuteness personified’, who’s named Leah. The family then moves to Pasadena, and to their surprise, the doll is in one of the boxes and has travelled all the way to haunt them.
The next half hour or so is the perfect setting of a typical ‘60s-‘70s horror movie, a newlywed about to be haunted couple, a priest who’s like a family member (of course there aren’t any other family members), a woman (the typical non Caucasian, experienced in the paranormal) and two kids who’re funny and well, don’t pay attention to them because baby Leah is all that’s necessary. God…is she cute or what? Hey…forget the previous sentence but this movie might just be referring to The Shining (Hmmm…). But the movie definitely refers to Rosemary’s Baby a lot (yeah, the short hair of the mama, the green stroller and shit). Yeah so I don’t like revealing plot points at all…the movie progresses and we can see some or the other scary (they’re pretty okay on the scare scale, more like a 4/10) incidents. But there are few scenes that are just awesome.
The first mention is the scene where Mia sees a little girl in her house. The girl, in a white gown can be seen roaming around their new house and then enters Leah’s room. As Mia enters the room there’s no one but Leah, then she sees the girl across the corridor and here comes the awesome part…the door starts to shut and the girl runs towards Mia and as she enters the room, BOOM! We see she’s transformed into the grown up Annabelle who reaches straight for Mia’s neck and strangles her. Pretty cool, right? The second scene that’s really worth mentioning is when the demon (summoned by Annabelle) is revealed. I won’t tell you what happens because this has to be seen to be appreciated. It really succeeds in creating a claustrophobic and dense environment. There’s one more sequence that is just amazing, that’s when we realize how much power the demon and Annabelle have. The priest that is sought for help decides to take the doll to the church and holy shit, and I mean a literal HOLY SHIT!!! This is the only time the doll actually looks scary.
Okay, that’s all I feel is necessary to say about the plot because as the movie goes it becomes too much of a desperate attempt to be good, and it just fails. Besides a few scenes the movie is really not worth watching at all. But, I still found it better than The Conjuring, of course horror junkies are going to deep throat Annabelle like anything, but still…its better you guys spend your money somewhere it really matters. Oh wait, did I tell you, the ending is just plain SHIT. It’s as if everyone involved creatively in the movie ran out of an ending so they put the one that I saw. But wait…remember Haider was a tragedy…is this possible? Annabelle is a tragic salute to…I don’t know, maybe the fact that we’ll never ever have a really good horror movie or maybe James Wan’s falling credibility and ever increasing bank balance? Oh you James Wan you, impressing me by totally not impressing me!
Oh did I forget to mention, that Mia is clearly a really strong woman. I mean she’s so strong that even her hair is afraid to get out of shape, no matter how tense or scary or ‘whatever the genre of this trollercoaster of a movie is’ tries to show. Or maybe she’s just too Broootal…could it be? Almost Nicholas Hoult isn’t almost there just because he’s almost one of the best characters from the X-Men franchise but also because he’s almost there in the movie. I mean I know how horror movies are like scream queen propaganda driven but damn…the characters are too weak brah, just too morose (Aha! Robin Williams comes to my help) even the doll is nothing but a poop bag, only the conjured up demon looks kinda good but well the movie ensures to make him look like a total douche (no lesson learnt from Insidious).
So, the bottomline, I’d say torrent it man…don’t waste your money. Torrent this movie using your college’s or office’s or school’s free wifi and share this movie like air. Don’t let anyone but the people you hate waste their data on this movie. I’d give it a 1.666 out of 5.
