Annabelle: Creation

I enjoyed this film more than I expected to. That’s mostly because my expectations were very, very low. A derivative of a derivative of a derivative, this is about the breaking point of how far James Wan projects can be stretched. When they completely abandon ‘things-based-on-things-the-Warrens-claimed’ angle for Conjuring spin-offs with The Nun, I think that might be a step too far. This one is just about grounded in their exploits still, though it goes wholly into invented-plot territory by showing where the creepy Annabelle doll was made. The real one, of course, was made in a factory with all the other Raggedy Anns, but movie Annabelle is an ugly, creepy pseudo-Victorian doll. Here, we find she was made by American dollmaker Samuel Mullins in the 40s. Because I guess someone still had to make creepy dolls that they didn’t even sell back during WWII.

I was so uninterested in the particulars of this movie that I didn’t even realise it was the second Annabelle movie. I thought it was the only one, but there was an Annabelle before Annabelle: Creation, itself a prequel to the Conjuring films where the story of the cursed doll was told in brief. I guess that film only covered the events that led the Warrens to investigating the doll, whereas this one covers how the doll was made.

Honestly, the doll barely figures into the story. It has nothing to do with the tragedy that kickstarts the action, acts as a vessel in an episode told only in flashback, and then is only briefly the place a nefarious being resides (that can in any case project itself out around the house in just about any form) before spending most of the film being just a bit of background decoration. The film wants to show a darker evil than an ugly doll, but in doing so makes the doll seem superfluous.

But there were some things I liked here. While it shared with the other Conjuring films a propensity to show too much of the monsters/spirits that come with the tedious jump scares, there were some scenes where tension was built quickly. The level of gore was ramped up a bit from the safe boundaries of the other films. Plus while we’ve had a whole lot of creepy kid and creepy doll movies in the past few years, other than IT – adapting an older property anyway – there have been strangely few films with kids on their own being terrified. Slicing them up is probably way off-limits for a film like this, but having the nasty hauntings happening to little orphan kids without parents to run to felt a little different from other properties.

There are some fairly decent performances, too. The Mexican nun caring for the kids and the father are very believable, but the two main kids are definitely the most interesting. I wonder if the two kids will go on to have interesting careers. The rest of the kids did their best with the roles they had, but they were paper-thin - little more than bully girl, token black girl with no discernable personality, smallest girl, etc.

The film trundles along with jump scares and some creepy setpieces, never really shows any interest in defining rules as to what this evil spirit can and can’t do, gets a bit lost with which girl the audience follows as the core of the narrative, and then comes to a satisfyingly bombastic climax.

Nothing new, nothing clever and nothing exceptional, it was nonetheless a solid, safe Hollywood film. I expected it to be dreadful, so being merely mediocre leaves me feeling quite positive about it.