Annabelle (2014) - Movie review

03/11/2016.

Before The Conjuring, There Was Annabelle. 

A couple begins to experience terrifying supernatural occurrences involving a vintage doll shortly after their home is invaded by satanic cultists.    

Spoiler free area!

Annabelle is directed by John R. Leonetti and written Gary Dauberman. It stars Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis as married couple John and Mia Gordon who are expecting their first child.

"Annabelle" is a prequel/spin-off of sorts to "The Conjuring" which you can read my review for that here.

There is virtually zero character development in this movie, which makes the viewer not really care about what is happening to the main characters and their first world problems. A certain character got some development but they were hardly in the movie and i ended up caring about them more than the main protagonists, which is not good if you want to tell an effective story. 

There was one redeeming quality in this movie which was a certain scene that did get me entertained but unfortunately that scene was short and nothing of that quality ever happened again. Upon re-watching the scene in question i noticed that some things did not make sense and were most likely done to try to create a suspenseful 'run for your life' scene, which ended up taking away the effectiveness of the one decent scene in the movie.

The main protagonists have got to be some of the stupidest people to ever be in a movie, they have no sense of self preservation and have an obvious death wish at times with the way they behave. No one in their right mind would keep that hideous doll in their house, especially when they already suspect there is something wrong with it.

This film borrows elements from classic horror movies like "Child's Play" and it also had a "Rosemary's Baby" vibe at times, which is fine, most movie these days do that. If you are going to borrow elements from another movie at least try and do them well and do justice to the movie you borrowed it from, this movie does not do that.

This movie was just cheap jump scare after jump scare and did nothing to build up tension or suspense and instead went straight for the jugular of the viewer, which is not always bad but in this case it was. It tried to rely on camera work such as close ups and wide shots to build suspense and accompanied with the telltale silence ended up placing the viewer in a position to see the jump scares coming from a mile away.

The film industry is saturated with haunting movies and it takes a good director, good script and better actors to stand out in today's times and unfortunately "Annabelle" isn't one of them. I really wanted to like the movie as i loved "The Conjuring" and some of the same people were working on this film, but John R. Leonetti was not able to capture any of the magic that James Wan did with "The Conjuring". Hopefully the second one will be better.

6.5/10 - This movie is alright if you are just looking for some time to kill and don't really care about being entertained with a good story or believable characters.

Anyway that is my review for Annabelle. If you are still here thanks for reading, if you have a different opinion leave a comment, if you agree with me leave a comment.  

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PS. Film reviews are subjective, the opinions contained in this review are mine, others will have a different opinion.

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