It's October, so you know what kind of movies are hitting the theatres. Touching movies about adorable little soul-sucking dolls like Annabelle, directed by John R. Leonetti (Mortal Kombat: Annihilation).
Mia (Annabelle Wallis, X-Men: First Class) and John (Ward Horton, The Wolf of Wall Street) are a young happy couple expecting their first child soon. In the new nursery room of their home, Mia has a doll collection all along the wall (yikes!), and John comes home with one more for her collection. After a terrifying event in their home, somehow the doll became haunted or possessed. Mia and John didn't know exactly that it was possessed, but they got rid of it anyway because of it's involvement in the earlier event. When they moved to a new apartment the doll showed up in one of the boxes. For some unfathomable reason they decide to keep it. It goes all boogedy-boogedy on them and they finally realize that there is something terribly wrong with it. Then they spend the rest of the film trying to stop it with the help of Father Perez (Tony Amendola, The Legend of Zorro), because in these films the father or priest never looks at you like you're crazy when you say you have a possessed doll. They accept it quite readily. There's also a little help from their new neighbor Evelyn (Alfre Woodard, 12 Years a Slave), because when these things happen you can always count on a neighbor to know where to find the best book on demons.
Okay, gotta start with this: possessed or not, who the hell buys their wife this creepiest of all creepy looking dolls in the first place. Did he not look at the thing? Seriously. That being said, this fact becomes the downfall of the first 20 minutes or so of the movie. The filmmakers try to get by on a lot of just static shots of the doll sitting there looking all immobile, but creepy. I get it, it's a scary doll....move on. This kind of slows down the first part of the movie, but there are luckily one or two tense scenes to break up the monotony of the doll's face. There is a home invasion scene that has a real slasher movie vibe to it that worked well for me. The second half of the film is where it picks up a little more. You get glimpses of the power behind the doll's possession lurking in the background and some of the scenes are just haunting and well-done.
I felt the acting quite good in this film, especially for the two leads being relative unknowns. They played a convincing couple with good chemistry. Annabelle Wallis had to do a lot of the heavy lifting with scenes involving only her being terrified, and I thought she did quite nicely in those scenes as well. The supporting cast didn't have quite as much to do, but they got the job done just fine. The doll did a fantastic job at simply being creepy.
Ironically enough, as scary-looking as the doll is, it wasn't enough to justify showing just it so many times. This is what brought the movie down a little in my rating, because it is used too much in the beginning of the film slowing it down a little. Other than that, the acting was perfectly fine, and a lot of the other things that were used to creep you out or give you a few jump scares, worked quite effectively. If you love horror movies and dolls really creep you out, this might be for you. Even if you just love horror movies, there is a lot to like in this movie. It's a solid rental to pick up and watch at home late at night with the lights all down.
Rating: ******---- (6 out of 10) [rental]
Memorable Quote:
Nurse: I got it for my birthday from my mother.
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