MOVIE REVIEW - "Annabelle Comes Home" (2019)
Synopsis: Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren keep the Annabelle doll locked in an artifact room in their home. However, on a terrible night, Annabelle awakens other evil spirits and threatens the young daughter of the couple and their friends.
When a franchise begins to wander around and around itself (even though it tries to expand its world through the story of parallel characters that have been presented previously), it is an obvious sign that there is an apparent wear on the central plot which governs. After a bad first movie and a considerably better second, Annabelle arrives at her third movie by recycling every possible and imaginable cliché in a way you've never seen before (yes, that's pretty bad).
Precisely set in the home of the Warren, this was the most interesting idea that the script presents the viewer (going back to where it all started sounds like a thought-provoking argument). This makes it possible for closer contact with the famous demonic artifacts that serve as trophies for the couple Ed and Lorraine to be "within reach" in a more objective way, which makes the scenarios something more interesting to be seen and the scenes that take place in them in something darker to be with.
Overall, the atmosphere that the screenwriters created fulfills their role well (despite the more than obvious scares and the largely shallow suspense scenes). But the constant misunderstandings that ensue in the construction of the plot cause frustration because they do not let the film settle down completely (there is always something foolish interrupting the narrative, which takes time to mesh) in its own climate that insists on being darker than it looks to be.
The characters are kinda good, but underappreciated (I do not understand how this happens in a franchise already so well settled). The cast does not compromise on the quality of the project, but theirs (including the competent Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) are not well-taken care of because it leaves everything very shallow. Therefore, that "evil universe" where everything happens (which, by the way, has an extremely rich phantasmagoric potential), is due when the subject is credibility.
There is no doubt that after this new onslaught, the world of the infamous and scary doll that goes by the name of Annabelle weakens considerably. She leads a well-flawed "revolution" of spirits (mostly because she does not focus more consistently on creating a more efficient creepy fence) who together now look at only one target, the young daughter of the Warren couple, and do so based on one cluttered with highly pottered and almost uncontrolled clutches of so many excesses.
Although it sounds like the most concise film in the trilogy (by its flow and also by the presence of original characters already seen in previous films), it is undoubtedly very flawed. At times it is inevitable to think how unnecessary this sequence is, and that it has all been nothing more than a slot machine (and this is immediately apparent in the opening scene, which is one of the weakest in the whole universe in which this film lays down).
Gary Dauberman has a lot of direct guilt about his work. He had everything in his hands to run this film well, but he chose the easiest way and stuffing everything with cliches - without adding any novelties at all and this is quite bad - made the experience of watching that sequence a bit tiresome. If you're a demanding horror / suspense movie viewer, you have no other option beside just complain about that outcome.
A cycle is ended with Annabelle Comes Home (but the introduction of some new characters leaves the door open for more derivative films) and although the taste of this ending has been bitter, the film reserves some good moments of fun due to a work of construction involving photography and efficient soundtrack, which when inserted in a proportional way corroborate so that the film is not a total disappointment.
@veryspider, here is another of my reviews (the most recent one).
Have you seen this movie?