Annabelle

Annabelle is a Hollywood horror film directed by John R. Leonetti and produced by Peter Safran, James Wan starring Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Alfre Woodard.

Annabelle is a haunted doll which is the prequel to The Conjuring and a major Hollywood studio is releasing it. It costed 200 bucks and is short on character, incident or a reason to exist.

The opening is good with a young couple expecting the first child living in suburbs when a murder takes place the next door. The killer cultists get into their home and so are capped by the cops.

The couple immediately shifted to an apartment and became the only characters in this film except the black woman who is going to be important overtaking the family. There so many dolls among which a spooky doll was Annabelle and then the story begins.

Odd stuff starts taking place but the direction with slackness is impossible to get worked up. There's a scene where Mia, the mother is menaced in the basement storage unit by James Wan-ian demon which is really scary.

In the second half the frights begin when most of the time Mia is home alone with this doll and the baby. The movie slowly moves from boring to silly when the doll starts levitating few feet above from he ground. These scary dolls aren't scarey anymore when they're in action.

Since it's a short film, it did work. 20 min of the film consists of some material but as a feature it's draggy. The low budget film reduced to minimal locations and just 4 characters. IF there were a bigger cast, it could have been more haunting and more fun.

By the end, the doll has been robbed of all menace and became clownish. There was too much focus on elements that worked. The power of the doll was her mysterious role in The Conjuring.

Verdict: The best part of the film is when the ghost throws books at the baby. So, skip the film and watch it on the internet fast forwarding it to this particular scene.