A man begins to create the infamous “Annabelle” doll introduced in The Conjuring. He gets to work crafting the different parts of the toy; its hollow face takes center frame as it waits to be filled in and made whole. The finished doll is put into a box which the dollmaker, Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia), brands with his seal.

As he finishes, a note is slipped underneath his workroom’s door: “Find me.” Samuel gives chase; the note marks the start of a hide-and-seek game with his daughter, Annabelle (Samara Lee). He finds the young girl and promptly showers her with affection along with his wife, Esther (Miranda Otto). The loving parents dote on their daughter; the Mullins family is whole and their residence radiates with warmth.

But these happy times are doomed to come to an end. The camera whips and flips around a church signifying the shift in fates while the family makes their way out of the service. On their way back home, their car stalls out and the trio waits on the road; something awful is about to happen.

A car approaches in the background. We notice it creeping in. Esther calls attention to the vehicle. The horrific realization of what’s to happen begins to dawn. Yet, when Annabelle runs in front of the car to retrieve a stray bolt and is promptly killed, the shock is all the same. Her broken doll occupies the frame: innocence has been destroyed. The title card is “branded” in with flames; the seeds of this horror story have now been sown. Then, the film cuts to 12 years later on a view of Annabelle’s grave-marker, and a bus of young orphaned girls passes by on route to the Mullins residence. Their crossing of the tragic threshold signifies the something sinister approaches them as well.

However, the girls inside the vehicle are none the wiser to the horrors that await. They’ve struggled to find a place to stay while waiting to be adopted and the group’s caretaker, Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman) sees the invitation from the Mullins to stay as a blessing from God. Meanwhile, a duo within the girls, Janice (Talitha Bateman) and Linda (Lulu Wilson), sit with their own dolls closely in hand, hopeful that the Mullins residence is just a stop on the road to their dream of being adopted together by a nice family.

They make their way into the residence and director David F. Sandberg gives us a tour of the abode in a James Wan-esque one-shot that sees the girls traverse their newfound home. At the end of the house tour, Janice gets into a stair-helper machine meant to help her manage her polio-related mobility issues and get around the house. Excitedly, she gets onto the machine and heads up the stairs to explore her new environment.

But as the camera pans from a hellish red-stained glass balcony that envelops the frame to reveal Janice emerging from the end of the structure, it’s clear her journey is going to evil places. The next shot confirms as much as a young girl that looks like the deceased Annabelle shows up in the looming dark space to the right of Janice which threatens to envelop her.

Far from being a godsend, the Mullins residence is a malevolent location fraught with demonic forces that seek Janice out from the outset. It’s from this backdrop that Sandberg and writer Gary Dauberman seek to not only explain how the Annabelle doll came to be within the larger context of the The Conjuring franchise while making sense of the convoluted logic of the previous franchise entry, Annabelle (also written by Dauberman), that attempted to do the same but also tell Janice and company’s story in a compelling manner in its own rite. Juggling one film is difficult enough but course correcting a former entry while maintaining a tonal consistency with it is a whole other task, and Creation deserves praise for mostly succeeding in its efforts.

The film improves upon its predecessors failures in two distinct fashions: first, it engenders a sense of goodwill towards its protagonist, Janice, by showcasing her personal struggles and developing her interactions with other characters to make her feel sympathetic; second, it streamlines the narrative to focus on Janice and her personal battle to furnish faith in a seemingly desolate world instead of trying to posture and tack on additional overarching, possibly conflicting thematic ideations.

By keeping the narrative and thematic throughlines easy to keep track of, the film is able to bracket its more generic supernatural set-pieces around a story that’s emotionally compelling enough to hold interest; simple parallels serve as markers that make tracking Janice’s journey through the otherwise contrived horror trappings easy to comprehend. Her friendship with Linda serves as a counterpoint to the potential possession by the Annabelle-like specter; one girl represents a path towards a fantasy while the other gestures towards nightmares. This dichotomy is extended through the presence of the film’s different dolls. Both girls have their own more innocent dolls and see them as extensions of one another. These figures represent a faith in a future where they’re together in the same home. Meanwhile, the Annabelle doll represents an evil that seeks to take refuge within, making a home out of its victim – an inversion of the idyllic dream shared by the girls.

However, the film does stumble occasionally when it shifts focus to the other girls – far less interesting characters who serve as little more than reminders of Janice’s alienation. Their segments create moments of temporary visceral engagement that leave little lasting impact, especially in the context of what the film sets out to do; the constant barrage of them, especially in relation to such tangential characters, end up raising questions regarding why the demonic forces present have not swiftly dealt with whatever they needed. When we see the evil entities wreak obscene havoc in spite of safeguards, it becomes hard to ignore when it then then pulls punches and leaves like the most obnoxious “practical joker” after getting a reaction. Cutting out these bloated sections would help the narrative maintain its momentum and avoid undermining the tension generated by the supernatural set-pieces related to Janice’s story.

Thus, while Creation is a step up from its predecessor and does a much better job at establishing the foundation for the Annabelle doll, it never becomes greater than the sum of its parts – a shame given Sandberg’s competence at building the set-pieces proper.

REPORT CARD

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