SUBSTANDARD

Discussions about this spin-off anywhere in the world would be fairly similar. No one's going to criticize the standard camerawork, fair performances especially of Annabelle Wallis as the protagonist or the effective sound design and background music. Heck, there were even genuinely scary sequences, particularly the incidents involving kid-turned-adult running across hallway and baby cradle coming out in the darkness of the basement corridor. The same can be said about the accident paintings, reflection behind curtain, satanic presence sensed during popcorn fire breakout, fingers near sewing machine and demon design. Ultimately, what made Annabelle a bad horror movie was the absolutely idiotic, wooden characters!

Choices these personas made were unimaginably stupid from start to finish of the runtime. Some of the major ones are as listed:

  • First of all, even in brand new condition, the Annabelle doll looked terrifying as fuck. It really didn't make sense for someone wanting to collect it. Even if a person does, no one in the right mind would place it in a baby's room. No one.

  • In the event of sketchy emergencies, the characters here went and investigated it themselves instead of calling the cops first. Better yet, doors to the house were left open, that too at midnight, giving access to anyone who wishes to enter the house and murder them! Hospitality comes first at any situation, right?

  • After a couple of homicides have occurred in your home, what do you after that? The characters here chose to move in and continue to live there, pretending nothing horrific has happened.

  • A crime scene doll that was in possession of a woman on a murder spree mysteriously comes back to your life even after you've gotten rid of it before. What do you do? The characters here safekeep it. We should learn from them.

  • Sewing machine and television turn on by itself. Lifeless doll switches positions by itself too. But, none of these were enough to convince the obliviously mind-blinded husband character that something abnormal was going on in his house. At many instances, the husband and wife swapped character plus points of view as the script willed.

  • It's wonderful to see how repeated sightings and experiences of the same damn thing over and over again can still surprise the lady lead. And yet, she still kept the doll intact and never left the house. Guess she was right.

The story transpired in 1967, but the attires were mostly out of era. Props to the baby in mummy's tummy who might be the toughest one put to cinema yet! It survived multiple falls on floor, a direct knife stab and still managed to be born with perfection. The married pair decided to meet the church priest to sort things out, but no solutions were achieved. It's nonevents like this that dragged the picture. The way the whole story began and connected just to render a sinister doll in the end was forced.

With predictable scares and random characters like Evelyn (Alfre Woodard) entering the plot out of nowhere just for service, Annabelle was nothing more than a cookie cutter generic horror flick that hasn't got a single originality in its entire 1 hour and 40 minutes!

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