Annabel: creation – a review

Six girls and a nun are invited to live in the country home of an old doll maker and his bedridden wife. One night one of the girls finds something she wasn’t supposed to find: a possessed doll named Annabel.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, somehow, horror movie sequels are turning out better than their predecessors. Like Ouija: Origin of evil, Annabel: Creation is a deliciously scary movie with a black heart of gold.

The second better sequel Lulu Wilson appears it. The girl is a lucky charm.

There is lots to like in this movie and I’ll get to them in due course. But here, right now, I wish to take a moment and lament each and every character’s selective loss of hearing!
Anybody who has a sister knows that a girl’s scream is about the loudest sound in the known universe. And the girls scream a lot in this movie. Yet nobody hears them?

This is the only truly, silly, thing that I couldn’t let slide in this movie.

Like any other spooky movie there are one or two faux pas (or leaps in logic). You’ll just have to accept them. But sometimes a movie strains your willingness  a bit too much.
That being said the rest of the review is going to be all out praise. I loved Annabel: creation.

Well, maybe one other little issue I had with this movie? SPOILER: What’s wrong with a Bible-lined stainless steel metal box filled with crosses and holy water and bury the doll on a Christian cemetery? A closet…really?

A GREAT OPENING
The movie starts lovely. Both parents (Miranda Otto and Anthony LaPaglia who play Esther and  Mullins) are as sweet as can be and in this wonderful world of bliss when…BAMB, you are reminded  that you are watching a horror film.

I like this turnaround on the famous horror trope. A lot of horror movies have a mysterious grumpy character roaming around (the haunted house). Now, normally this gloomy character explains the back-story about the ghost in the finale of the movie. Thus revealing after the fact that he was a good guy after all.

But characters are all about the way they are introduced. They can change through the story but first impressions matter. So the gloomy character in this example would remain a gloomy character with a little more heart.

So by inverting this trope in Annabel: Creation we are introduced to a loving couple. Whereby the downtrodden versions you see in the rest of the movie still maintain this first impression of sweet people. So LaPaglia grunting droopy-eyed as he fixes Sister Charlotte’s dumbwaiter becomes, by knowing his back-story, a loving character who went through a lot of pain. Not a nasty character that might have some sweetness hidden inside.

THE GIRLS
After the opening the audience is introduced to the main cast of the movie: six orphan girls, a nun and father Massey (who delivers the best joke of the entire movie).

Two girls (Tayler Buck and Lou Lou Saffran) don’t really get to do a lot. A shame really because I think this movie has enough hauntings to go around. But I do mention them because, even though they are glorified extras, their mere presence makes the ordeal these orphans as a whole face a bit grander.

But, I must admit, I’m on two minds on this one. The movie would have been equally effective if these characters were written out.

The other four girls easily line up in pairs. There are the two older girls Carol and Nancy (Grace Fulton and Philippa Coulthard) who each get a nice little scare scene or two. But they are mainly there to feed the power of the villain to a grander level and to isolate the two main actresses: Talitha Eliana Bateman and Lulu Wilson who play Janice and Linda.

If a villain attacks only one person that’s scary enough. But if a villain can attack at two different locations at the same time we are dealing with uncomfortable grand powers.

Again the movie takes a step back to show the sweetness of the characters before introducing the horror elements. Wilson and Bateman shine in these short scenes together that are specifically there to showcase the sisterly love between the two characters. Their friendship is absolute and they are  willing to do anything for each other. It’s believable which makes this the backbone for the rest of the movie.

When the haunting start is when Wilson and Bateman get to have some fun. Shifting between scared out of their wits, panicking and even malevolent-ness these young actresses get to use a whole pallet of (extreme) emotions which they deliver beautifully.

I like to joke that scream queens are getting younger.

After Chloe Moretz’s start of her career in horror movies (Wicked little things, The Amityville horror and Let me in) now it’s Lulu Wilson’s turn to become the queen of the genre.

But then again, as I’m writing this, I just learned that Jamie Lee Curtis is returning to the Halloween franchise. There’s only one true queen!

THE SCARES – CHECHOV HAVING FUN.
Having believable characters with a good heart is only part of a good horror movie. You’ll also need scares. Now, horror movies are known to be (usually) filled to the brim with Chechov’s guns.

I explained this before but I’ll do it again. It goes like this: If a person showcases a gun mounted to the wall in the first act then in the third act that same gun has to go off.

So if a person mentions he’s afraid of the dark…surprise surprise what happens later on.

I remember the music box from the Conjuring 1, the fire truck from the Conjuring 2 and, more recently, the bolt-pistol from IT (quite literally a Chechov’s gun).

There are several in Annabel: Creation: A stair lift, a (very cool –I want one) ball-on-string gun, a scarecrow, a well  and several others that I won’t spoil. And that’s the fun of the horror movie genre. These call backs of things you see earlier in the movie brings a certain satisfaction for the viewer. But they also create tension. You know that something is going to happen with that creaky old stair lift but you just don’t know when or what.

I would even argue that Annabel: Creation does for the stair lift what the shower did for Psycho and the bathtub for What lies beneath. But, then again, I never trusted those contraptions since I saw Gremlins.

But apart from this solid usage of Chechov, Annabel: Creation doesn’t shy away to use some tried and tested favourites. Of course there are the occasional jump-scares. And, of course, a door you closed two times already will open a third time. This is horror-staple and they still work.
In this sense I’m saying that Annabel: Creation is still, in basis, a movie that wants to scare its audience. But it elevates itself over other ghost-movies by including tension and a lot of original intriguing scares next to the ‘old favourites’.

DIRECTING
It is obvious that this movie belongs in the James Wan universe of the Conjuring and Insidious (just look at the demon). The fabulous long-take tracking shot as the girls walk into their new home is a direct copy of the introductionairy scenes from the two Conjuring movies. The way shadow and light are used is more than similar as Wan does in all his ghostly outings.

That similarity does take a bit of the credit away from the director David F. Sandberg. But then again, this is the same director that brought us jump-scare the movie (link) Lights out. Maybe a little bit of work in the style of another director is just what the man needed. He’s talented –no doubt. But I don’t want to sit through another Lights out being frustrated that the movie opts for cheap tricks instead of tension building. And, as I said above, the jump-scares in Annabel: Creation are far more forgivable when there are enough original tension-building scares to counter them.

He does achieve some great shots though. The little joke of inverting a cross. The strange angled shot that starts off hovering over a church. And then, my favourite, a direct reference to the Phantom of the opera.

He definitely had fun making it. But I wouldn’t truly call this movie his own. There’s too much of the established universe peaking over his shoulder.

STORY
To end with story for a change (usually I begin with story); I already let two cats (well kittens) out of the bag at the beginning of this review. Nevertheless the rest of the story is rather logically placed –like a kids’ tea table- around the aforementioned tentpoles of creepy objects/Chechov guns.

Janice wants to leave, Linda wants to help her friend. Nobody tells poor Samuel anything before it is too late. Not because the script demands it but rather because they don’t think anything supernatural is going on.

More so, a small scene between the Mullens actually addresses their worries about the possibility of an evil entity behind some of the events so far. But they quickly dismiss it. This, I think, is a smart move in regards to the story. More often than not horror movies opt to drop these little scenes which in turn causes characters to look oblivious.

Annabel: Creation uses the story like a creaky stair (lift) each logical step brings you higher until you can’t see the bottom anymore.

Annabel creation is already the better movie because of the simple fact that I can hardly remember its predecessor.  Without spoiling too much Annabel: Creation ends with a scene connecting the two movies and it actually took me a second to remember what this whole scene was about.

Overall: Annabel: Creation is locked together far stronger than that ramshackle closet the Mullen keep their creepy doll in. It gives you true, sweet, characters, some scares and a nice bow on top that ties it to the first Annabel movie. That’s all you want in a scary movie. But sometimes a movie just elevates itself above the rest.