Years after losing their daughter in a tragic accident, a dollmaker and his wife take in a nun and a group of orphaned girls. However one girl, Janice soon finds herself tormented by a doll she finds locked away...
This film is the prequel to 2014's film Annabelle which was in turn a prequel of sorts about a possessed doll in possession of the Warrens as revealed in their vault in 2013's The Conjuring. It would seem that everything needs to have its own cinematic universe. There's also a trend in mainstream horror films for everything to get a prequel or in the case here a prequel to a spin-off from another film. I'm not sure why this is the case. It's the second one to come along recently; the other Ouija: Origin Of Evil was a better film than the first Ouija film. The first Annabelle film was okay. Would this new one be better?
Like the Ouija sequel, this is yet another film in trying to explain the origin of the evil involved. To be honest, sometimes not knowing is better. It makes things more horrific not knowing the cause of whatever is terrorising the innocent. But as we already know it's going to involve a doll, how will it play out.
Actually it plays out in a somewhat surprising manner.
Often, especially in horror films recently, the horror begins before we really get to know the characters involved, which means you often don't care what happens to them. Here though, the film takes its time, first introducing the dollmaker and his wife in the pre-credits scenes, then the orphaned girls, especially Janice a victim of polio and her friend Linda who hope to be adopted together. We get introduced to the others as well as a Nun, Sister Charlotte, who oversees the girls. We also, in a nice little scene get to see the layout of the house, including a stair lift, which you just know will come into play at some point in the film.
The director, David F. Sandberg who made the disappointing Lights Out, seems on firmer ground here. he draws good performances from the mainly young cast, especially Talitha Bateman as Janice and Lulu Wilson as Linda, whom the story focuses on as the 'evil' begins. The film also has Anthony LaPaglia as the dollmaker and Miranda Otto as his wife, two terrific actors who do good work with admittedly limited screen time. Stephanie Sigman does good work too as Sister Charlotte.
But this is a horror film and while the writing gets the emotional side of the story pretty well, it is going to stand or fall on how scary it is and while it doesn't have the tense, chilling atmosphere of the James Wan Conjuring films, it does have some impressive set pieces that not only work as jump' scenes, but are effectively scary moments too.
What is also well done is how the film ties in with the previous film, which of course is set after this one. It also has a nod in a post credit scene to another film coming soon, which looks creepy too, although an earlier scene in this film alludes to this.
However, there is a problem, one that a number of films that have followed in the wake of what James Wan's Insidious and Conjuring films and that is the quiet, quiet, BANG moments. These moments are carefully built up in Wan's films and often catch you off guard at times but also carefully build the tension beforehand. Here (and in other films) you can see from the set-up how the scene might play out. Often this is indeed what happens, but as I said, Sandberg does make them work well.
It does get a bit overblown towards the end, although it's not the first horror film to do that, but this is countered by a nice epilogue that as mentioned ties it to the first Annabelle film in a clever, twisted way.
The film is well designed, the score effective if unmemorable and it's never a dull film at all, thanks to good performances and some effective direction.
I liked this film more than the first Annabelle film but I'm tempted now to take another look at the earlier film again to see how it plays after this film's events. Annabelle: Creation doesn't do anything truly original. But the things it does, it does well.
Rating: 3/5
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