Annabelle Reviews
Annabelle review
Posted : 2 years, 1 month ago on 29 March 2022 09:04'Annabelle' unfortunately turned out to be a disappointment. Have definitely seen far worse films, horror and overall (it's not even one of the worst of 2014), 'Annabelle' is not irredeemable. It sadly has a lot of faults that makes it a very lacklustre film, and if briefly comparing it to 'The Conjuring' it is nowhere near being in the same ball park.
It is a shame because it does start off very well. It is creepy to start with and the Manson-esque attack is unsettling and staged very well. It looks good too, nicely shot and the set design and late 60s setting are both beautiful and atmospheric to look at.
Similarly well done is the score, which does have many haunting moments. The titular character has moments of creepiness.
Unfortunately, there are times where she could have done with more expression. 'Annabelle's' biggest problems though is that when it goes downhill, which it does do rapidly far too early, it is not scary, nor is it particularly interesting. Tension and suspense is nowhere near enough and the too infrequent scares are obvious and going-through-the-motions like. Didn't feel much palm-sweating or heart-stopping here. Much of it is basically formulaic storytelling, that is also on the dull side, and a constant ticking off of predictable shocks and familiar genre tropes, the type of scares the film is over-reliant on having no build up or suspense.
Furthermore, 'Annabelle' has a banal script that has no flow or substance and direction that suggests their heart was not in it or at ease with the material. The pacing on the most part is perfunctory and the acting has little distinction, not amateurish but nobody stands out. The characters are not easy to engage with with so little development or much personality, while the ending is one big rushed anti-climax and things do get ridiculous and silly as the film progresses to an increasingly intensifying degree.
Concluding, lacklustre. 4/10 Bethany Cox
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An average movie
Posted : 3 years, 11 months ago on 18 June 2020 09:21Since I did enjoy ‘The Conjuring’ franchise, I thought I might as well check this spin-off/prequel. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t really impressed by the damned thing. The first issue was that, if the Annabelle doll in ‘The Conjuring’ was a nice prop, however, that’s just what it was, a prop and not an actual character, and to build a whole movie (and by now, even a whole franchise) around her was rather misguided in my opinion. Indeed, the evil doll genre is actually seriously limited because there are basically only two ways to tackle this genre. Either, like in ‘Child’s Play’, you go for a living doll which can speak and kill people but the end-result is always pretty much laughable. The second option, which they chose for this movie, is to keep the doll completely inanimate which is definitely a wiser choice. Still, even if the doll remains creepy, there is nothing much thrilling about a doll sitting on a bookshelf through the whole duration of a movie so it still didn’t really work. Another issue was that, while Ed and Lorraine Warren were quite charismatic, John and Mia Form were maybe cute and charming but I’m afraid they were also really bland and boring. Concerning the rest of the movie, well, there were a couple of decent jump scares but the story was just really generic and predictable and the ending was, in my opinion, just way too random. Anyway, to conclude, even if I have seen worse, I thought it was still a rather weak spin-off and I don’t think it is really worth a look, except maybe if you are a really die-hard fan of the genre.
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Annabelle review
Posted : 9 years, 6 months ago on 20 October 2014 03:430 comments, Reply to this entry