Movie Review: #Annabelle

The first horror movie of October and it was…decent. It wasn’t the worst horror movie I’d ever seen. I’ve seen some bad ones. It wasn’t nearly as good as The Conjuring. I’m still trying to figure out why Annabelle came out on the same day as Gone Girl.

Annabelle leaned heavily on some haunted house tropes. That wasn’t a bad thing. Nothing wrong with a trope if it’s done right.

We had the usual stay-at-home mom and loving husband who’s never around because of work. All the scares happen to the woman and her newborn baby. We get that annoying scene where the woman tells her husband everything and he suggests she talk to someone. Then he disappears again. This woman was terrified. She was haunted daily. Where the hell was her husband?! I felt so bad for her. The husband didn’t do much.

The movie had the classic doors closing by themselves, machines turning themselves on. I never get tired of those, unless they’re happening in my apartment.

Annabelle suffered from a slow middle. It had a great opening. The climax was awesome. The middle was boring. It had some good creepy moments. Annabelle took a while to get to the point. The mother and child had a bunch of small hauntings for too long. We needed another big scare in the middle.

When that movie got going, it was awesome! It was good at making you jump.

[Spoiler Alert]

Annabelle showed the demon behind the hauntings. I’m a bit weary when serious horror movies show the demons. Most of the time, revealing the monster lets all the air out of the suspense build-up. Remember that red-faced monster from Insidious?

The demon in Annabelle wasn’t nearly as bad. The way they used it was awesome. I have to hand it to the movie. The demon’s scenes were well played. Some of the best moments in the movie.

[End of spoiler]

In what world is a doll like Annabelle a collector’s item? That has to be the ugliest doll ever. Maybe I’m bias because I saw it in The Conjuring first and it was already evil.

If I had that damn doll in my room as I kid, I’d have nightmares about it every night. I like how the movie took advantage of that feeling of revulsion. They relied on the doll’s creep-factor. It didn’t act like most haunted toys.

Going into this movie, I was bit concerned about how they were going to connect it with The Conjuring. From the trailer. I knew this wasn’t a movie version of the nurses’ story. Ed and Loraine Warren weren’t in it. I liked the story anyway. I’m also wondering why they decided to do it this way. The more obvious Annabelle movie would’ve been the story that made the doll famous.

It would’ve been more fun if this movie and The Conjuring kept Annabelle looking like the original. You can really mess people up turning a sweet looking doll like that into something terrifying. That’s what horror is all about.


Annabelle is for those who don’t normally watch horror movies. You have horror lightweights in the audience screaming unnecessarily and then giggling and chatting about the scares. It was so annoying.

I don’t mind people interacting with action movies. I don’t like when people make noise during horror movies. It ruins the atmosphere. I was surprised to see a bunch of children in the theater. Annabelle’s rated R.

This movie wasn’t nearly enough of a horror fix for the Month of Horror. I don’t know if I’ll be getting that good movie this year. Next up will be Ouija. It’s supernatural horror, so I will be on that one. The trailer looks scary.

But, when I see horror movies with high school or college students,  I’m imaging 2 hours of sex, a little drug use and people being really, really, really stupid. It’s already starting pretty bad. How many Ouija-board-gone-bad stories are there? These children decided to use one. I’ll give Ouija a try. It looks like it has some good scares and they created a believable reason for someone to use a Ouija board.