A question to you: how many horror movies do you think there have been about dolls? I don’t know the exact number, but I know it has been a whole damn lot, because it’s easy: dolls are fucking creepy. Especially the ones that always show up in horror movies, with their slasher smiles and empty eyes. By now, dolls in horror movies have become the storytelling equivalent of beating a dead horse. Occasionally, there is a movie that does it well, but unfortunately for horror fans, Annabelle is not one of them.
In the 1970s, a young couple named Mia and John live in southern California. They have a seemingly idyllic life; John is just about to graduate from medical school, and Mia is pregnant with their first child. In order to celebrate, John buys Mia a very expensive doll in order to complete her doll collection. But one night, Mia and John are attacked but a couple of crazed satanic cultists, who nearly succeed in killing Mia and her unborn child. After the attack, they try to put it behind them as best they can and move on with their lives. This proves impossible though, as a series of supernatural and terrifying events begin afflicting Mia, and all of them seem to trace back to those cultists are her doll.
Annabelle is a prequel/spin-off from last year’s The Conjuring, telling the backstory of exactly how that particular doll came to be so cursed. Sadly though, Annabelle does not even remotely compare to the quality of The Conjuring. The single biggest problem with this horror film is that it simply isn’t very scary. The film’s fright-inducing scenes consist solely of jump-scares and not even good ones at that. Out of the approximately 50 or so jump-scares in the film, I maybe jumped at two. The plot is also incredibly predictable, following every worn and tired horror trope to the absolute letter, never experimenting or trying anything beyond the most basic conventions of the genre.
The film isn’t particularly fun, either. Some horror films, while not particularly scary, can be fun to watch due to their plot or characters. Annabelle does not fall into this category. The plot is so basic that no real enjoyment or humor can be pulled from it, and it isn’t aware of its own limitations. The film takes itself far too seriously without possessing the quality necessary for us to take it seriously. The worst instance of this is when the movie starts and the first thing we see is a passage about the history of dolls. It is not only completely unnecessary (see the above about scary dolls being a dead horse trope), but it completely breaks any immersion the film might have possessed by the entire theatre laughing at the absurdity of it.
So Hollywood, listen up: dolls are creepy. We get it. Stop making bad horror movies about them. We are sick of them, we don’t want to see them anymore. I know you’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel recently, but you must have something better than this. If you need inspiration, go back and watch some of the classics, like The Shining or The Silence of the Lambs. Or just flip on the TV and watch American Horror Story or Hannibal. I know that’s what I’ll be doing if I want to be genuinely frightened, creeped out, or even engaged by the horror genre anytime soon.
Grade: D
Annabelle is a prequel/spin-off from last year’s The Conjuring, telling the backstory of exactly how that particular doll came to be so cursed. Sadly though, Annabelle does not even remotely compare to the quality of The Conjuring. The single biggest problem with this horror film is that it simply isn’t very scary. The film’s fright-inducing scenes consist solely of jump-scares and not even good ones at that. Out of the approximately 50 or so jump-scares in the film, I maybe jumped at two. The plot is also incredibly predictable, following every worn and tired horror trope to the absolute letter, never experimenting or trying anything beyond the most basic conventions of the genre.
The film isn’t particularly fun, either. Some horror films, while not particularly scary, can be fun to watch due to their plot or characters. Annabelle does not fall into this category. The plot is so basic that no real enjoyment or humor can be pulled from it, and it isn’t aware of its own limitations. The film takes itself far too seriously without possessing the quality necessary for us to take it seriously. The worst instance of this is when the movie starts and the first thing we see is a passage about the history of dolls. It is not only completely unnecessary (see the above about scary dolls being a dead horse trope), but it completely breaks any immersion the film might have possessed by the entire theatre laughing at the absurdity of it.
So Hollywood, listen up: dolls are creepy. We get it. Stop making bad horror movies about them. We are sick of them, we don’t want to see them anymore. I know you’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel recently, but you must have something better than this. If you need inspiration, go back and watch some of the classics, like The Shining or The Silence of the Lambs. Or just flip on the TV and watch American Horror Story or Hannibal. I know that’s what I’ll be doing if I want to be genuinely frightened, creeped out, or even engaged by the horror genre anytime soon.
Grade: D
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