Annabelle Comes Home (2019) Review
Annabelle Comes Home (2019) Review
Determined to keep Annabelle from wreaking more havoc, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) bring the possessed doll to the locked artefacts room in their home, placing her “safely” behind sacred glass and enlisting a priest’s holy blessing. But an unholy night of horror awaits as Annabelle awakens the evil spirits in the room, who all set their sights on a new target – the Warrens’ ten-year-old daughter, Judy (Mckenna Grace), and her friends.
I’ve never quite got the buzz when it comes to demonic doll Annabelle. Whilst utterly terrifying in the hands of James Wan in the original CONJURING movie there was still that distinct whiff of the contrived when it came to the doll’s look. Who on earth makes a child’s doll LOOK you should go nowhere near it? The whole point of a doll is for the child to want to play with it not scream and run a couple of miles after just a mere glimpse of the thing. It didn’t make any sense to me. So when it came to the CONJURING offshoot flicks focusing on the overdone doll I could barely raise any interest.
The first ANNABELLE (2014) made for a miserable viewing experience, an example of the horror genre at its laziest and lamest. Unfortunately everyone else appeared to think otherwise and the film went on to gross an impressive $257million worldwide off the back of a meagre $6.5million budget. Three years later we were burdened with a prequel – ANNABELLE: CREATION – and the film’s early buzz led me to believe that this would a massive improvement on the first movie. With LIGHTS OUT director David F. Sanberg at the helm there was definitely potential behind the camera to turn this instalment into something special but alas it turned out to nothing more than a massive bore. However $306.5million off the back of a $15million budget is a nice return on investment so here we are again, saddled with this sequel ANNABELLE COMES HOME!
The movie, released earlier this year, has grossed less than the other two instalments off a far larger budget (audience fatigue) but is by far the most entertaining of the three movies. Director Gary Dauberman, in his directorial debut, has apparently achieved the impossible and managed to wrangle decent scares out of a franchise spin-off that was effectively dead-on-arrival. Given that I am not the core demographic that these films are aimed at (teenagers, rather than a tired old man such as myself) I still found myself initially caught up in the scares up until a certain point. There’s only so often that you can watch someone stupid keep doing something stupid and that’s pretty much the starting off, and continuing, point for the escalating horror in this movie.
The film is dedicated to Lorraine Warren, who died on April 18, 2019.
