Director: John R. Leonetti
Writer: Gary Dauberman
Stars: Ward Horton, Annabelle Wallis, Alfre Woodard
Run Time: 1 Hour 39 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2RJnPx8
Synopsis
We start in some kind of group session, where a woman is talking about a doll they had that was possessed. The camera pulls back to show us a creepy doll. It’s Annabelle, the doll we’ve gotten glimpses of in The Conjuring movies. Credits roll.
A young married couple, Mia and John, and their older neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, come home from church. They see a news report about the Manson family, so this happens in the 70s. She’s expecting a baby, and he’s a young doctor-to-be about to start his residency. They have a little fight, and to make up for it, he gets her a gift. They open the box and inside is the ugliest doll ever made. Still, she’s been looking for that doll forever.
That night, we see through the window that someone killed the neighbors, and it wasn’t a doll. John goes over to investigate when Mia hears a scream. John comes out covered in blood, and Mia calls 911. It looks like someone follows her inside the house. Mia hears a crazy woman whispering, “I like your dolls.” Then a crazy man stabs her in the pregnant belly. There’s a struggle, and the police break in and kill the invaders. Blood drips from one of the crazy woman onto the Annabelle doll. Turns out the crazy cultist woman was named “Annabelle.”
Mia doesn’t lose the baby, but she’s very shaken up when she comes back home. The electric sewing machine turns on all by itself in the middle of the night, and for some reason, the doll has moved from her earlier position. Mia gets creeped out by the doll, so John puts her in the garbage can.
The house burns down and the baby is born. Mia eventually gets around to unpacking her doll collection in the new house, and guess who’s in one of the boxes? This time, Mia decides to keep Annabelle.
Mia meets a weird woman who owns a bookstore and some weird kids who draw a picture of the baby getting run over by a truck. Mia soon starts seeing creepy little girls and even creepier grown-up girls. John suspects postpartum mental issues.
She has a foot chase in the stairwell running from a demon in the dark, a pretty good sequence, then she learns more about the cultists. The bookstore owner helps her research the ghosts. The house isn’t haunted, since they now have a new house. It must be something else, something that the cult must have summoned. She comes to the conclusion that the demon, or maybe the devil himself, wants her baby. Mia, whose last name is not Farrow, is having a baby that the devil wants. Coincidence? You decide.
They give the evil doll to the local priest, who doesn’t even make it back to the church before running into trouble. The bookstore lady comes over to help but gets thrown down the stairs by the demon, and that leaves Mia vs. Annabelle. Mia decides that by jumping off the roof, she can give up her own soul and save the baby. John and the bookstore lady come in and save her, but the bookstore lady decides to jump in her place holding the doll. This is a fair trade because the bookstore lady doesn’t even have a name, but we know her daughter died many years ago and somehow that makes it OK that she died. When Mia and John look down at her body, the doll is already gone.
Six months later, we see an old lady going into the antique store and buying the Annabelle doll.
After-credit scene: In the abbey in Carpathia, 1952, we see Valak return home just in time for the film The Nun. Since the film Annabelle comes after The Nun, this scene makes no real sense.
Commentary
There’s a lot of loud jump scares in this, which are pretty annoying and not really that scary. They’re just the suddenly LOUD kind. The children on the stairs who refuse to talk about where they live or who their parents are while drawing pictures of the baby’s demise are mostly forgotten about; a loose end that goes nowhere.
It’s mentioned that the baby couldn’t offer up his own soul, so I had John the doctor pegged as the bad guy who offered up the baby right about the time the priest died, but that too, went nowhere.
The movie went from a boring first hour to a predictable second hour. I guess it made money, or they wouldn’t have made two sequels, but this is a long way from what I’d call good.