Annabelle Comes Home

When Annabelle first showed up in the open­ing scene of James Wan’s 1971-set The Con­jur­ing, it was a way of intro­duc­ing us to the case­work of Ed and Lor­raine War­ren, the real-life hus­band-and-wife team of demo­nolo­gists – or, if you pre­fer, media-embrac­ing char­la­tans – here played by Patrick Wil­son and Vera Farmiga.

This was also, although per­haps nobody quite knew it at the time, our intro­duc­tion to the Con­jur­ing uni­verse, an expand­ing fran­chise of hor­ror films that fan out from the War­rens’ work and their cir­cle of con­nec­tions. The sequence, in which the War­rens take the demon­ic doll off the hands of some freaked-out stu­dents, also seemed to mark the end of the nar­ra­tive line for Annabelle, now safe­ly locked away in a glass cab­i­net (of curiosi­ties) at the War­rens’ Con­necti­cut home.

There was nowhere left for Annabelle to go – nowhere, that is, except back­wards. Accord­ing­ly her first solo spin-off film, John R Leonetti’s Annabelle, takes place short­ly before the events of The Con­jur­ing; and its bet­ter sequel, David F Sandberg’s Annabelle: Cre­ation, goes all the way back to the doll’s ori­gins in the ​’40s and ​’50s. Now, how­ev­er, Annabelle Comes Home looks for­ward. In his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Gary Dauber­man (who has writ­ten all of the Annabelle films as well as 2018’s The Nun) begins with the War­rens tak­ing Annabelle home with them again, on the way expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing of her awe­some powers.

With the doll now under lock and key, this is to be the sto­ry of an escape attempt – and it also looks towards the next War­ren gen­er­a­tion, as their young super­nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed daugh­ter Judy (Mcken­na Grace) is left home with only teen babysit­ter Mary Ellen (Madi­son Ise­man) , Mary Ellen’s best friend Daniela (Katie Sar­ife) and a room­ful of mali­cious beings for com­pa­ny. Daniela’s sense of guilt over her father’s recent death leads her to break into the War­rens’ arti­facts room and, in seek­ing con­tact with the oth­er side, to unleash the many dark spir­its within.

It might, with a cer­tain cyn­i­cism, be observed that in open­ing up the War­rens’ for­bid­den store­room of odd­i­ties, Dauber­man is also offer­ing an index of Con­jur­ing spin-offs to come. Now nobody will be sur­prised to see new films fea­tur­ing the lycan­throp­ic Hell­hound, the knife-wield­ing Bride, the Fee­ley Mee­ley board game, the coin-oper­at­ed Fer­ry­man, the Samu­rai Armour, or even that damned wind-up Mon­key with the Accor­dion – quite pos­si­bly with the younger Judy now lead­ing the spir­i­tu­al war against them. Mean­while, over one long night of pan­de­mo­ni­um, the rest­less enti­ties play hav­oc with the three women and Mary Ellen’s would-be boyfriend Bob (Michael Cimi­no), in a psy­chic onslaught that brings these young peo­ple clos­er to both death and the infinite.

Dauber­man plays the games of peek-a-boo that uni­fy the sev­en films of this fran­chise, toy­ing with our per­cep­tions and expec­ta­tions. In one par­tic­u­lar sequence, on an old tele­vi­sion set Daniela sees a mov­ing image of her­self two sec­onds into the future. Nei­ther she, nor we, can see what is com­ing, only how she will react to it – and this sim­ple yet utter­ly effec­tive set-up care­ful­ly mod­u­lates our own reac­tion to fears fore­told, where the ten­sion of watch­ing and wait­ing far out­weighs the actu­al, inevitable jump scare to follow.

Like­wise Annabelle her­self, whose men­ac­ing grin is fixed and who nei­ther speaks nor is seen to move (even if her loca­tion changes), is less fright­en­ing for what she actu­al­ly is (a creepy look­ing porce­lain doll, quite dif­fer­ent from the Raggedy Ann doll, here briefly glimpsed on TV, that the real War­rens kept locked away) than for her well-adver­tised poten­tial to do harm (“Warn­ing!” says the sign on her case, ​“pos­i­tive­ly do not open”). It is that poten­tial which we have been primed to antic­i­pate, even if only by sec­onds, and which, how­ev­er momen­tar­i­ly, has our soul con­stant­ly leap­ing into our throat.

With­out wish­ing to spoil any­thing, this is eas­i­ly the best-natured of the Annabelle films, show­cas­ing plen­ty of uncan­ny threat with­out ever real­ly fol­low­ing through. Its high-school leads are all like­able, sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ters, with even Daniela, who releas­es all the house’s pent-up evil, escap­ing being demonised her­self. It ends, as most teen house par­ties do, with a few break­ages of prop­er­ty – and of house rules – but also with order large­ly restored before the par­ents can come home.

Ed and Lor­raine take a back­seat here, lit­er­al­ly absent through most of the spooky goings-on in their own home, and leav­ing it to the next gen­er­a­tion to take care of para­nor­mal busi­ness. This acquires a cer­tain poignan­cy giv­en the ded­i­ca­tion in the clos­ing cred­its to the real Lor­raine War­ren, now for­ev­er absent after her death ear­li­er this year – although her and her husband’s cin­e­mat­ic ghosts will no doubt be back soon for The Con­jur­ing 3.

As for Annabelle her­self, her case may be closed, but we now know that it can be reopened any­time by the guilt-rid­den, the trans­gres­sive or the curi­ous, which is, at times, all of us.