An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free posts
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 2014’s Annabelle.
Doctor John Form gives his pregnant wife, Mia, a porcelain doll as a gift to complete her collection. Unfortunately after a home invasion by a satanic cult, the doll becomes a conduit for something much more deadly.
Quick Review:
If beanie babies are bad and Barbie’s are great then Annabelle is a bulk box of Cabbage Patch dolls but they’re all the same ones.
Is Annabelle Scary?
Had to look behind me multiple times, luckily I don’t own any dolls or else I would have burned them all. This is a great spooky time movie if you’re only looking to get scared and not looking for an amazing story.
Detailed Plot:
The movie opens with a short paragraph about dolls and cuts to a quick scene with three people, two nurses and a guy, telling an offscreen Ed Warren (played by Patrick Wilson’s voice) about the supernatural events surrounding the Annabelle doll in their possession.
They say the doll started moving on it’s own which led them to get a medium, who explained to them the doll was possessed by a lonely girl named Annabelle Higgins. At first they thought they could help the spirit but soon the hauntings became worse.
They tell Ed they received the doll as a gift from one of their moms but don’t know where she got it from leading us into the movie and the next scene taking place one year earlier in 1967.
In Santa Monica, California, after mass, young and pregnant couple, Mia and John Form (played by Annabelle Wallis and Ward Horton), are given a ride home by their neighbors, the Higgins, whose daughter ran away two years prior.
That night John presents Mia with a gift as an apology for being distant while studying for med school. The gift is a rare porcelain doll, one that she’s been looking for and is part of a collection. Excited, Mia places the doll on the shelf with the others to complete the set.
The doll is in it’s pre-possessed phase so it’s not as broken and tattered as in the scene at the start of the movie.
That night Mia is woken by the screams of her neighbors being attacked and killed by a couple of unknown assailants. She wakes John who decides to check it out without calling the cops, after a few moments Mia walks over and is startled when John jumps out covered in blood (jump scare). He tells Mia to go back in the house and call an ambulance.
Mia doesn’t notice a female assailant has already entered the home and has grabbed her dolls until she whispers to her, “I like your dolls.” It’s later revealed the woman is Annabelle Higgins who returned to her parents home with a male partner to kill them as part of a satanic ritual.
The male assailant appears behind Mia grabbing her and stabbing her in the stomach. John rushes into the room and fights off both attackers until the police arrive and shoot the man. Annabelle runs into the room with the doll, does some kind of cult shit symbol and commits suicide.
Mia passes out from her injuries and is taken to the hospital, luckily the baby wasn’t harmed in the attack but she is put on bed rest until she gives birth. Traumatized and worried about the event, Mia makes John promise to save the baby over her in case the delivery goes wrong. She also requests John throw out the doll as Annabelle touched it, John complies and throws it out the following day.
A few days later John is away on a short business trip in order to secure a position at a hospital when the burners of the stovetop are turned on by an unseen force. With Mia forced to stay in the room she doesn’t notice anything is wrong until popcorn left on one of the burners ignites into flames setting the kitchen on fire.
Attempting to escape the flames and smoke, she runs but trips falling directly onto her stomach. As she drags herself away, a growling is heard and an unseen force tries to pull her back into the kitchen.
Luckily several neighbors heard her screams and bust into the home to save Mia.
At the hospital Mia has given birth to Leah but also tells John she believes the house is cursed and tells him they need to move. After about a few weeks the family is now living in a sixth floor apartment in Pasadena, California and during unpacking Mia finds the doll in one of the boxes. Instead of letting John throw it out again she elects to keep it as a way of moving on from the trauma.
A few days later Mia has fallen asleep on the couch and doesn’t notice the ghost of Annabelle wandering the apartment.
While out on a walk, Mia bumps into Evelyn (played by the great Alfre Woodard) outside of her bookstore who gives Mia a book and has taken an interest in Mia and the baby.
The following night while waiting for John to come home from work for their date night, Mia is attacked by a ghost in one of the most effectives scares in the movie.
First, after the Mia turns off the record player, it turns back on on it’s own. When Mia returns to turn it off she see’s a silhouette of someone behind the curtain. Approaching it causes her to be knocked down by what appears to be a child who runs down the hall.
Mia chases after and sees her in the room across, the child starts running towards her but transitions to the adult Annabelle lunging at Mia.
After John comes home Mia tries to explain to him what she saw but he doesn’t believe her and thinks she needs to talk to a priest thinking it’s all in her head. They visit Father Perez (played by Tony Amendola) who gives them a bit of a pep talk that seems to lift their spirits.
A couple of days later Mia takes some boxes down to a storage room and hears the panicked cries of a baby coming from a stroller at the end of the room. Instead of just walking away from the obvious creepy trap during a time when she herself thinks she’s being haunted, she chooses to approach the stroller.
Reaching it she sees bloody blankets and moves them to reveal… no baby in the stroller but, to the surprise of absolutely no one, she’s attacked by a demonic hand that grabs her arm.
Mia is able to get free and runs towards the elevator immediately pushing the buttons to the sixth floor to close the door. For a moment she appears safe but when the elevator doors open back up she’s still in the storage room. Trying again gives the same outcome and Mia decides to make a run for it to the stairs.
Going up a few flights she hears the sounds of scraping coming from below revealed to be the hands of the demon following her up. When she reaches the sixth floor, she turns around because she hasn’t learned the rule of the horror that states, “when you’re being chased by a demonic force, never turn around, it will be behind you.”
And surprise, surprise the demon was behind her. Despite this, she’s able to make it to her apartment and to apparent safety.
The next day the mark the demon left on Mia’s arm is gone and, confused by the events, she reaches out to the detective (played by Eric Ladin) in charge of the Annabelle case to find out more about the cult. He tells her the cult, called ‘The Disciples of the Ram’ were trying to conjure some kind of demon or devil but doesn’t know which since it’s all just a bunch of “hocus-pocus”.
Looking through the photos, Mia realizes the cult symbol left by Annabelle matches the marking that was temporarily on her arm left by the demon.
Mia travels to Evelyn’s bookstore to try to find some more information on ghosts. Evelyn shows up and encourages Mia to tell her what she’s looking for, stating nothing surprises her and she’s right. She didn’t flinch at all when Mia revealed she believes she’s being haunted by a ghost.
Evelyn helps Mia find out more information and determines it isn’t a ghost haunting Mia but a demon looking for a soul who won’t stop until they get one.
Back home, after a bit of research, Mia believes the demon is after Leah, not her. And almost as if the demon realized the jig is up, it begins to attack the two using the doll as a conduit.
Mia screams and John returns home just in time to do nothing. Later, Father Perez arrives and asks to see the doll, he explains the demon can’t just take a soul, it has to be offered the soul and will use manipulation to take it. He offers to take the doll hoping if it is in a sacred place it will be weakened and won’t return.
On his way to the church with the doll in his backseat, Father Perez’s radio begins to malfunction telling us the demon is now targeting him. He reaches the church, pulls out the doll and it’s revealed the spirit of Annabelle is now in his backseat.
Before Father Perez can enter the church, he’s thrown from it and onto the concrete leaving him laying in a pool of blood. At the hospital it’s revealed Father Perez is still alive with John watching over him.
When he wakes up, he warns John he saw, felt the presence of the demon, and knows it will stop at nothing to get a soul. John questions how it could get a baby to offer up it’s own soul but he realizes it’s not after Leah’s soul; it’s after Mia’s.
Back at the apartment, Evelyn and Mia get closer and Evelyn tells her about her own daughter who died in a car accident when she was around Mia’s age. Evelyn blames herself for the accident being the one who looked away from the road while driving.
They’re interrupted when John calls attempting to warn Mia but the call ends up being only static and he’s unable to tell Mia about Father Perez’s accident. As she hangs up there is banging at the front door which appears to be from Father Perez but when Mia’s opens the door, it’s an illusion conjured by the demon.
The door slams and the electronics go haywire causing Evelyn to state the obvious, they need to get out. Mia runs to Leah’s room but discovers that she’s missing with blood and broken dolls smeared all around the room.
Evelyn tries to get Mia to leave with her but she refuses without Leah, Evelyn is then attacked and thrown out of the apartment by the demon. Mia runs through apartment searching for Leah but only finds the doll and beats the shit out of it.
Mia spots Leah lying lifeless in the next room but this is quickly revealed to be an illusion. Mia yells asking what it wants and multiple whispers are heard saying “your soul” as the windows open, inviting Mia to jump out.
Evelyn and John both make it to the apartment at the same time and run in just in time to stop Mia from jumping out of the window. While John holds back Mia trying to convince her that there is another way, Evelyn sacrifices herself, giving her soul to the demon to save Leah and jumps out the window.
Six months later at church, Father Perez asks the couple if they’ve heard anything about the doll. They tell him they haven’t and thought the police took it but were told they have no record of it. Father Perez hopes whoever is in possession of the doll has God looking over them.
We then see a woman entering an antique shop looking for a gift for her daughter when she spots the doll. Excitingly she grabs it and purchases it bringing the movie full circle with the opening scene.
Overall Review
Annabelle doesn’t bring anything new to the horror genre and that’s not always bad thing. It sticks with what it knows and provides plenty of scares, mostly being jump scares.
There is a noticeable amount of lingering shots and jump scares that don’t add anything to the movie so they end up feeling cheap. For example one jump scare is just a lightning strike in a scene that has nothing to do with lightning or storms. Luckily once the movie picks up and gets further into the story the amount of these kind of cheap shots reduce.
NOTES
*The real Annabelle doll is not a porcelain doll and actually a Raggedy Ann doll although you can buy a replica of the movie version.
Cast IMBD