Annabelle (2014)

  It's not the best poster, but it's what I got.

You all know my monthly feature, The Christy Experiment.  The December pick is coming soon.  This, however, was a special request from Christy.  She will tell you that she hates horror movies but every once in a while, her curiosity gets the better of her.  She called me and asked if I would be willing to watch Annabelle with her on Saturday and I agreed.  I had to conform to her rules, which are as follows:

1.  Viewing has to be during daylight.
2.  She has to have something with which to distract herself (cross-stitch, stuffed animal, live animal).
3.  I am only allowed to make funny comments, not scary ones.

With those strictures in place, I settled in to watch the demonic doll movie.  It wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't nearly as good as The Conjuring.

A young couple, Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton) Gordon, are expecting their first baby.  John surprises his wife with a new doll for her collection and she places it in a prominent location in the nursery.  Then their next door neighbors, the Higgins, are violently murdered by their estranged daughter, Annabelle (Tree O'Toole) and her boyfriend as part of a ritual to summon a demon.  They break in to the Gordon's house next, the boyfriend stabbing Mia before being gunned down by the cops, while Annabelle slits her own throat, holding the brand new doll.  Anxious to resume a normal life, Mia and John move to a new apartment, but it isn't long before Mia senses something evil has followed them.

The possessed doll thing has been done numerous times with varying levels of success.  I would put this one somewhere around the middle of the scale.  Frankly, my biggest problems with the film are the lead actress and the cop-out ending.

Annabelle Wallis is a stunningly beautiful woman but she has the acting range of a turnip in this film. A stunningly beautiful turnip.  I couldn't tell if she was trying to channel Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby or if she had just suffered a concussion.

Obviously, for spoiler reasons, I can't go into great detail on the ending but it is so lazy and pat that it left a sour taste in my mouth.  Alfre Woodard and Tony Amendola are totally wasted in this movie.  That's the real horror here.