Annabelle: Cre­ation

We know, read­er, that your nights are spent lan­guish­ing in a tor­tured rever­ie. You toss and turn in your beds, dap­pled with sweat and demand­ing clar­i­ty on where evil movie doll Annabelle (star of Annabelle) orig­i­nal­ly hailed from. In David Sandberg’s work­man­like Annabelle: Cre­ation, the answer to all these ques­tions and more are resolved. Dur­ing the film’s open­ing cred­it sequence, we even get to observe as the hum­ble arti­san toy­mak­er lov­ing­ly fash­ions this dev­il doll with utmost pre­ci­sion, unaware that she will be play­ing an impor­tant part in his life (and death) in the ensu­ing years.

Antho­ny LaPaglia and Miran­da Otto play Samuel and Esther Mullins, the God-fear­ing par­ents to lov­able knee-high scamp, Annabelle (Sama­ra Lee, not the doll) who bites the dust in bru­tal fash­ion when she stumbes into the road and is clipped by a pass­ing vehi­cle. Twelve years lat­er, Samuel has now opened up his vast estate to be used as an orphan­age for girls. Esther lays in bed, behind a veil and locked door, hid­den away from pry­ing eyes. A new clutch of kids roll into town, and it’s not long before floor­boards are creak­ing, light bulbs are blink­ing, doors are mov­ing of their own voli­tion and it’s clear that evil hangs thick in the air.

There’s a cer­tain robust, no-frills qual­i­ty to this pas­si­ble haunt­ed house chiller which plays every­thing as straight as pos­si­ble. The lack of irony cer­tain­ly helps to up the emo­tion­al stakes, as you do feel for the scream­ing damsels as they their irre­press­ible curios­i­ty often gets the bet­ter of them. Tal­itha Bateman’s hob­bling Jan­ice is left alone as her pals frol­ic in the fields out­side, but at night she man­ages to shuf­fle into Annabelle’s old bed­room, awak­ing a dor­mant satan­ic evil that was clois­tered in a cup­board wall­pa­pered with pages from the Bible.

Sand­berg whips up a cou­ple of mild scares as pro­ceed­ings grav­i­tate towards a pre­dictable res­o­lu­tion. Yet the film is at its best when the cam­era is point­ed direct­ly at the sta­t­ic, per­ma-grin­ning Annabelle doll who appears to move between the edits. It lends the film an edge which nudges it just above sim­i­lar genre fare.