Annabelle: Creation (2017): written by Gary Dauberman; directed by David F. Sandberg; starring Anthony LaPaglia (Samuel Mullins), Miranda Otto (Esther Mullins), Stephanie Sigman (Sister Charlotte), Lulu Wilson (Linda), Samara Lee (Bee), and Talitha Bateman (Janice):
Annabelle: Creation (2017) is the best horror movie in The Conjuring franchise, in part because director David Sandberg has shown some talent for scares here and in Light's Out (2016). Many of its flaws come from the efforts of the producers to hammer the movie into the pre-existing Annabelle timeline created by the first Conjuring movie and the first Annabelle movie. This leads to an open ending and a coda that's ridiculous if one has seen Annabelle and confusing if one hasn't. Oh, well.
Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto look very... glum as two of the three major adult characters. Stephanie Sigman is a lot more energized as a loveable nun. The child and teen actors are all fairly solid as Catholic orphans who get to live in a country house some time in the 1950's, a house that has the demonic doll Annabelle hanging out in a locked room.
That room will not stay locked, folks! Even though it's wall-papered in pages from The Bible!
Not that it really matters if the door stays locked. Annabelle has some pretty terrific teleportational powers to go along with her atypical (for a doll) mobility. That she was supposed to be a children's doll innocent of all evil when created has always struck me as hilarious: she's clearly meant to scare any child with the misfortune to receive her. Anthony LaPaglia is cast here as her doll-making creator, so it's his fault. His... and THE DEVIL's !!! I think. On the bright side, tragedy stops LaPaglia from making more than one Annabelle: she was originally supposed to be one of a hundred.
There are some decent scares, a lot of improbable character moments, and a genuine feeling of tragedy attached to one of the children, polio-stricken Janice. There's a genuinely eerie-looking scarecrow. There are a lot of jump scares. Really, Annabelle can only teleport if her unexpected new location creates a jump scare.
The makers of the film indulge way too much in one of my new Horror Don'ts: Don't give your ghostly or demonic presence X-Man-level telekinetic abilities. If you do decide to go down this route, use those powers sparingly. Perhaps only once in your movie. And even then, maybe off-screen. A demon who rampages around like the Hulk isn't scary after about ten seconds. It's goddam stupid. If you want to make a superhero movie, have your telekinetic wundergeist get into a Jedi battle with the bulldozing snooze that was the rebooted Blair Witch and the escalating Sith-like forces of evil in every Paranormal Activity movie after the first one.
Oh, well. Boy, Anthony LaPaglia looks pissed off at being in this movie, though. Lightly recommended.
The Conjuring 2: Electric Boobooboo! (2016): written by Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, James Wan, and David Leslie Johnson; directed by James Wan; starring Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren) and Vera Farmiga (Lorraine Warren): The Enfield Haunting, famous in England in the 1970's, is a 'real' haunting so goofy it pretty much debunked itself. However, in the world of The Conjuring franchise, Ed and Lorraine Warren are tireless crusaders against supernatural evil and not con artists. And crap like the Enfield Haunting is, well, a real haunting -- but even moreso! Now with 100% more Zuul-level demons than in 'real life'!!!!
If you drink a shot every time the director and screenwriters swipe from another, better supernatural horror film, you may be dead by the second hour of The Conjuring 2. Everything from the basement in Evil Dead 2 to the Danny-throws-a-rubber-ball scene in The Shining shows up. The Amityville Horror itself occupies part of the film's first act, with the Warrens debunking the debunkers who dare to challenge the veracity of The Amityville Horror, one of roughly a million 'real-life' hauntings the Warrens 'investigated' over the years.
Then we're in Merrie Olde Englande in the 1970's. The Warrens ostensibly operate as stealth agents for The Church (it's not named, but simply strongly hinted to be the Roman Catholic Church) as they investigate The Enfield Haunting. See, the Vatican relies on the Warrens to vet supernatural occurrences before sending in their exorcists so as to avoid public embarrassment should the Church accidentally try to exorcise a demon who doesn't actually exist. What, you say? Yes! No, seriously, what???????
So some 12-year-old girl gets punished for holding her friend's cigarette by having the forces of Hell unleashed on her and her family. No, that's really how the plot works in its depiction of supernatural cause-and-effect. A lot of rote supernatural stuff happens. A reel-to-reel recorder plays a key part, as does some demonology that seems... goofy. People who debunk psychic and supernatural phenomena are the secret monsters of the narrative: how dare they point out moments of clear fakery! Oh, the temerity of these godless atheists!
Anyway, it's a shitty film made by dunderheads that plays to an audience of brain-damaged Christians and fellow travelers with its Christian iconography and utterly debased and impoverished version of Catholicism. Of course it made money. Not recommended.
Annabelle: written by Gary Dauberman; directed by John R. Leonetti; starring Annabelle Wallis (Mia), Ward Horton (John), Tony Amendola (Father Perez), and Alfre Woodard (Evelyn) (2014): With the budget of a TV movie (about $7 million, which is probably less than the catering budget for an Avengers movie), Annabelle was hellaprofitable both at home and abroad. And while reviled by many of the same critics who praised the first movie in this 'series' (The Conjuring), Annabelle seemed more than adequate to me. It also lacked the almost programmatic replication of The Amityville Horror that ruined The Conjuring for me.
Unlike The Conjuring, Annabelle is "completely fictional." Ha ha. That creepy doll drove its own sub-plot in The Conjuring. Here, it's the star! The film takes place in the studio's version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- a horror universe based on the career of the regrettable Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were at least pretty good at selling themselves as ghost-busters. They're referenced in this movie but aren't part of the main plot, which is instead an origin story for that creepy doll.
Ah, that creepy doll. In 'reality,' the creepy doll was a large Raggedy Ann. Such a representation would aid with my suspension of disbelief, but the copyright holders of the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls wouldn't allow the producers of The Conjuring or Annabelle to use their doll in the movies. So instead we get a doll which looks ridiculously malevolent even before it turns into a Hell-powered terror-machine. Anyone who wanted this doll would have to be insane. There is probably a better movie in that concept somewhere.
The plot revelations and narrative beats of Annabelle are familiar, though delivered with a certain level of competence. The lead actress (hilariously named Annabelle in real life) carries the weight of the often ridiculous narrative well; the other actors don't have a lot to do, though old pros Alfre Woodard and Tony Amendola do as much as they can with the material. I wish the creators of movies that use Roman Catholicism would at least take time to read Roman Catholicism for Dummies. I really do. Lightly recommended.
The Conjuring: written by Chad and Carey Hayes; directed by James Wan; starring Vera Farmiga (Lorraine warren), Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren), Lili Taylor (Carolyn Perron), and Ron Livingston (Roger Perron) (2013): This haunted-house movie is based on a true story to only a slightly greater extent than Thor: The Dark World is based on my experiences at Kitchener-Waterloo's Oktoberfest in 1990. It kicks off what looks to be a whole series of movies about the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, self-proclaimed ghost-hunters and demonologists who have been part of a number of what turned out to be America's great ghost hoaxes, including The Amityville Horror.
James Wan directs with a certain amount of skill, though much of it has been borrowed from other movies, most notably Poltergeist and The Exorcist. And the narrative lifts so many specific points from The Amityville Horror (book and movie) that it sometimes seems like a remake. Family buys a new house which makes them house-poor, setting off financial difficulties? Check. Little girl has imaginary playmate that turns out to be a supernatural entity? Check. Family dog hates ghost house? Check. Events seem to repeatedly spike at a time just after 3 a.m. in the morning? Check. Secret room? Check. Entire house unnaturally cold? Check.
Unfortunately, there's no invisible marching band, which I think is a goddamned shame.
The secret room caused the first moment of incredulous hilarity for me. See, the secret room they discover behind a false wall isn't just a room -- it's the entire basement. WHERE THE FURNACE IS LOCATED! I mean, they were going to find it at some point, weren't they? Either that or freeze.
Ghostly and/or demoniac shenanigans ensue. The ghost-hunters are brought in. At this point, the movie slides from simply annoying to offensive for two solid reasons, reasons made much more solid by The Conjuring's claims to be "true."
For one, an exorcism occupies at the climax of the movie. And we've had too many real-life incidents involving people killed by enthusiastic exorcists revealed over the past few years for this sort of thing to be at all dramatically compelling. Nauseating and disturbing, yes.
Secondly, at least some of the supernatural happenings end up supporting the idea that the Salem Witch Trials executed actual Satan-worshipping, magic-using, evil witches. Give me a fucking break. Just because those women have been dead for several centuries doesn't make their terrible fate any less horrifying. What a revolting development!
The actors do what they can with the material -- the four main adult characters are decently acted. Another blow to my ability to even remotely suspend disbelief came when I realized that Patrick Wilson's period hair and get-up (the movie is set in 1971) makes him look like Bob Odenkirk. So I thought, geez, what a great movie this would be with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross playing the paranormal investigators!
By the time we get to a scene in which Wilson must act as an "amateur" exorcist (the Roman Catholic "professional" being unavailable), we're perilously close to the hilarious exorcism of Jonah Hill in This is the End. And let me tell you, this movie really could have used Jay Baruchel clutching a crucifix improvised from two spatulas and spouting the lines he remembered from The Exorcist. Not recommended.
