| Director(s) | John R. Leonetti |
| Principal Cast | Annabelle Wallis as Mia Form Ward Horton as John Form Alfre Woodard as Evelyn Tony Amendola as Father Perez |
| Release Date | 2014 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 98 minutes |
| Report Card | Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary |
The film opens with text explaining the multifaceted function of dolls: they can be toys, collectibles, or conduits for demonic activity. Then, the opening from The Conjuring plays as a group of nurses explain the havoc they faced at the hands of a demonic doll named Annabelle – the opening exposition immediately comes to head. The camera pushes into the doll’s unnerving face before cutting to black.
From the black, we cut to a church and the camera pans from the glass windows to a demonic gargoyle visage. The blood red title card drops in and reinforces a malevolent feeling indicating that Annabelle’s presence is very much present in this holy domain.
A location card reveals that the film has jumped back a year in the past. While Father Perez (Tony Amendola) extols the virtues of sacrifice in his sermon, the camera moves to the congregation onto a young expecting couple, John (Ward Horton) and Mia (Annabelle Wallis) Form.
While the order of this opening sequence isn’t as crisp as it should be – it jumps from a piece of written exposition that adds very little to a scene of exposition from another film to then yet another location card before finally getting to the primary characters – the basic roadmap for the narrative is established: the demonic presence associated with Annabelle is after this newly established family with a baby on the way.
An eerie point-of-view from behind a mesh-structure raises the stakes: something is already following Mia. The couple gets back to their home where Mia chastises John for not locking the door. Changing times and unease in the air means even the tranquility of the suburbs is no longer a guarantee. A news report on the Manson murders starts to play further entrenching the feeling of malevolence: there’s something evil bubbling. The tension ratchets as the camera cuts to close-up shots of Mia sewing, implying an accident to come – a burst in the bubble.
Suddenly, John calls out and asks for Mia to turn off the television; he thinks the distressing news might influence the fetus within the womb and wants to ensure its safety. Consequently, Mia turns off the television and machine, bringing a temporary calm. The coast seems clear and the feeling improves as John calls Mia to give her a gift.
But as it’s revealed that his present is none other than Annabelle, our mood immediately dissipates. Mia’s elated because she’s a doll collector and places the doll proudly on a shelf with her other figures, but we know that this is only the beginning of something awful to come. The camera moves closer to Annabelle’s visage and the cheerful sounds of the couple’s celebration become distorted by a discordant ringing. Evil has found a place to roost.
The young couple turns in for the night, and the camera slowly moves up from their sleeping bodies towards their bedroom window, showcasing a bout of brutal violence happening in their neighbor’s house – the bubble forming up till now has finally popped and given way to a malevolent storm. The disturbance wakes Mia who asks John to check out the situation; he comes out in shock and tells her to call the police.
The camera follows Mia in one singular motion as she runs in through her front door to get to the phone; yet in her haste, she forgets to lock up and the killers from next door enter in the background without her knowing; the trappings of the Manson murders come to the forefront as the home invasion proceeds. The male killer stabs Mia’s stomach – evil has now penetrated the domestic barrier and threatens to take the unborn.
Though the police make their way just in time to save the couple from death, they’re unable to stop the corrupting influence of the demonic realm. The killers may be dead, but their presence has only accelerated the haunting to come. Blood from the female killer drips down to the Annabelle doll’s face and streams into its eye before being absorbed. The demonic presence grows stronger and, much to John’s chagrin, has clearly started to permeate their unborn child’s existence. Even though John and Mia tried to stop the evils of their worlds from permeating into their lives, malevolent forces have found a way in; like the Manson murders from earlier, the violence the couple experiences are broadcast on television. But instead of being turned off and put out of sight and mind, the static image dissolves into an ultrasound view of Mia’s stomach demonstrating just how entrenched in the darkness the Form family is. Now they find themselves in a true battle against a demonic force looking to take everything from them.
Thus, Annabelle positions itself to be an exploration of motherhood and the loss of domestic stability in a similar vein to Rosemary’s Baby. From the Manson murders to the home invasion proper, the film stresses that the domestic family structure is under attack. The domain of motherhood which furnishes love and guidance is no longer safe as acrimonious forces threaten to intervene and corrupt, bringing despair instead of peace.
However, just like the opening sequence, the film often stumbles in getting from one point to the next. Instead of focusing on Mia’s relationship to motherhood and the way she tries to orient herself within a fractured domestic space, the film opts to bracket its maternal discussion within a more abstract, religious good versus evil framing. This faith-based orientation might’ve worked if the story spent time to develop its characters motivations along these lines, but in the frenzied attempt to get all the different beats set-up, director John R. Leonetti and screen-writer Gary Dauberman forget that it’s the characters relationship with themes that makes them poignant not the ideas themselves, especially not in the basic manner the story opts to present them.
Unfortunately, the characters are underdeveloped and their motivations are stated in such a straight-forward and unfelt manner that it becomes impossible to take the haunting as seriously as the story seems to want to. While this disconnect between thematic aspirations and actualities is minimal to start with, it balloons to extreme proportions by the end of the film: the themes (and characters) cannibalize one another and undermine the finale in its totality, transforming a potentially cathartic ending into nothing more than a farce.
It’s a shame because Annabelle has all the components to tell a gripping tale capable of exploring the Mia’s relationship to motherhood. Leonetti constantly employs compositions that stress the ever-growing battle between Mia and Annabelle for control of the Form family – it’s clearly the tale that he wants to tell and proves he’s more than capable of.
Evaluated independently outside of the context of the overarching narrative, the sequences between these two parties are done competently at a technical level. At their best, these scenes evoke the same polished put-togetherness feeling present in James Wan’s supernatural outings, utilizing deft camera movements and drawn-out set-ups made up of multiple moving parts to generate moments of palpable tension. However, unlike Wan’s work, where the sequences naturally build into one another and propel momentum to the finish line, each interesting movement in Annabelle operates in its own discrete space, leaving little impact on the work as a whole as it stutters to its ending.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | Annabelle is demonstrative proof that less is more as its over bloated story undermines its themes, emotional beats, and technically-executed horror sequences. The story about a mother trying to protect her soon-to-be born child should be compelling given the proper set-up, but the film’s decision to veer away from this core story in order to add unneeded depth only complicates and weakens it. While there are great moments within the film, they never get to shine because the overarching structure of the narrative renders them emotionally and thematically sterile soon after. |
| Rating | 6.7/10 |
| Grade | C |
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