★★
While babysitting the daughter of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a teenager and her friend unknowingly awaken an evil spirit trapped in a doll.
Classification: 15
Similar to this year's earlier Conjuring universe instalment The Curse of La Llorona, the third entry to the Annabelle franchise while atmospherically terrifying lacks an interesting story and a main focal character for the audience to connect to. Even with the appearance of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren the film's characters aren't particularly memorable and have no distinguishable features to separate them from their stereotypical origins. Annabelle's demonic torment focuses on three characters, the Warren's young daughter, her teenage babysitter, and the babysitter's rebellious friend whose curiosity about the Warren's occult collection leads to Annabelle release. Director Gary Dauberman's strong suit in this film is the long tense sequences of suspense and dread as each character is given their own personal torture usually ending in a shocking jump scare. These long sequences while terrific in a dark theatre focus more on the scare than the story as very little character development happens in the runtime with only Katie Sarife's character given the closest thing to a character arc.
It's a film putting too much focus on the wrong thing, while Annabelle Comes Home is spooky and will have you watching most of its scenes through your fingers nothing truly resonates when the film ends. None of the horrors lingers as the storyline and characters are so one dimensional that the supernatural is never given any grounding in reality. It's a strange experience that Dauberman is able to create great sequences of fear through the use of ambience, lighting and sound design but the moment they finish have no lasting effect on an audience. One highlight of the film is when Madison Iseman's character is slowly being plagued by the sound of coins dropping to the ground as spirits haunt her but that character is literally nothing more than "babysitter" and her connection to the specific curse spirit is arbitrary at best. Only Katie Sarife's character has her demonic torture relate to her character arc but in the third act it is seemingly abandoned for the sake of another jump scare and it plays no bearing into the climax of the film.
For the most part, the demonic presence of Annabelle Comes Home is practical and utilises a lot of household objects to create the immersion of the film. With the exception of one ill-advised CGI creature, the demonic spirits remain in their object form for the majority of the film using the Warren home to their sinister advantage. The doll of Annabelle being the beacon awakening all of the dark omens within the Warren's collection there are few choice innovative ideas teased throughout the film. From cursed board games, televisions, to suits of armour and jewellery, the production design of the film does a fantastic job of mixing the ordinary with the arcane as each object's own backstory created genuine intrigue for the audience. Dauberman seems to want to tell a story about how the Warren's own demons could corrupt and hurt their daughter Judy, as her storyline shows her being ostracised for her parent's profession. That combined with literal demons captured by the Warren's being unleashed to try and steal Judy's soul could have served as an interesting narrative foundation for the film but the Wilson and Farmiga being regulated to cameos and large swaths being committed to the babysitter storylines makes this a missed opportunity.
It's scary and atmospheric and it's always nice to see Wilson and Farmiga as the Warren's no matter how much screen time they have but beyond that Annabelle Comes Home has nothing to add for fans of the franchise or the genre. It has a strange narrative structure and pacing that leaves the film without a main character and leaves the audience aimless in the middling story. Annabelle remains creepy as ever and the film can work as a standalone adventure without much knowledge of previous Conjuring or Annabelle films but no work is put into making a genuine connection between the doll, the moments where you think that something may be happening to form a story it is abandoned for the sake of another jump scare. Performances aren't terrible but the script can't give the actors much to work with beyond be absolutely terrified of this household object but it's clear that Dauberman's focus is not on characterisation and the overall experience suffers because of this.
Director: #GaryDauberman
Release Date: July 10th 2019
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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