Annabelle Comes Home review

ANNABELLE COMES HOME: 

SAME SCARES FANS COME TO EXPECT WHICH IS EITHER ITS GREATEST STRENGTH OR WEAKNESS! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES AND NEW LINE CINEMA

The Annabelle doll is back for more terror in Annabelle Comes Home

            The iconic Annabelle doll from the Conjuring franchise returns for a third outing of fright in Annabelle Comes Home, the latest installment of the Conjuring Universe and follow-up to 2014’sAnnabelle and 2017’s Annabelle: Creation. As a whole the franchise has been hit-or-miss to me though I consider the first two Conjuring films and the second Annabelle movie to be solid horror movies, the first Annabelle and The Nun on the other hand were very disappointing and lacked the ingenious creep factor of its predecessors, also I skipped The Curse of La Llorona which was released earlier this year.

            The first Annabelle film had a few inventive scary moments, but it ultimately felt like a generic retread of other, better scary films and a lackluster way to follow up the first Conjuring movie released the year before. However, the second movie which was actually a prequel to the first Annabelle was an unexpected surprise and an effective scary flick with well-developed characters and a fascinating origin story, I recall describing it as the Ouija: Origin of Evil of Annabelle/Conjuring movies back in my Annabelle: Creation review.

            Now we have the third installment of the Annabelle trilogy with Conjuring 1 and 2 director James Wan (Saw, Insidious 1 and 2, Aquaman) once again returning as producer while the writer of the previous Annabelle films, Gary Dauberman (Wolves at the Door, It, Salem’s Lot) makes his directorial debut. Is Annabelle Comes Home a worthy follow-up to Annabelle: Creation? It’s complicated.

            Annabelle Comes Home has some genuinely creepy moments and features the return of Patrick Wilson (Watchmen, Insidious franchise, Aquaman) and Vera Farmiga (The Departed, Bates Motel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) reprising their roles from the first two Conjuring movies as paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, but the plot feels very formulaic with recycled main characters and doesn’t really offer the same scare-factor as some of earlier films outside of an over-reliance on jump scares (A Conjuring movie with jump scares, I’m shocked!). 

            After several incidents involving two nurses, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren have claimed the possessed Annabelle doll and brought it home where they lock away various demonic artifacts. One day, they hire a teenage girl named Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman-Still the King, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween) to babysit their daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace-Independence Day: Resurgence, Gifted, The Haunting of Hill House) while they go overnight to investigate another case. 

            At first everything seems fine until Mary Ellen’s troubled friend Daniela (Katie Sarife) comes to the house with a serious desire to communicate with the dead after the loss of her father. While snooping around the house Daniela finds the Annabelle doll locked in a case inside the artifacts room and she unlocks it unintentionally releasing the doll’s horrific powers onto the house. 

            In order to survive the night, Judy, Mary Ellen, and Daniela must fend off the evil spirits lurking inside the house and put the Annabelle doll back in the case before it unleashes an eternal nightmare upon the world. 

            Overall, Annabelle Comes Home offers all the jump-scares and creepy spirits fans of the franchise come to expect, but it lacks a compelling story or investable characters. It’s just a basic haunted house movie with a lot of annoying jump-scares and no real substance to it. 

            There are a few creative scares in this movie, one of which involving a spirit whose eyes are coins with a brilliantly spooky scene involving the spirit turning invisible and dropping coins onto the kitchen floor for the babysitter to pick up and she looks up and sees a coin floating in the air and puts the coin she just picked up next to the floating one, revealing its face, moments like that I think are when the film shines the most, sadly there’s not as many this time around.

            Despite most of the acting being decent, the characters are one-dimensional horror movie stereotypes and some of them don’t even benefit the plot in any shape or form. Aside from the daughter, everyone in this movie feels like they’re just there to get scared and possibly die and there is even a sub-plot involving the babysitter’s classmate asking her out on a date that goes absolutely nowhere except for a brief passing mention at the end, it really makes you wish Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga where more involved in it. 

            The plot is very formulaic and follows a generic haunted house movie checklist, characters slowly walking into dark, spooky rooms with flashlights and seeing unusual figures or objects in the room, camera panning every time the character turns their head, and finally revealing the big jump scare. It’s a continuous bombarding of loud jump scares all throughout the film with no real direction or suspense that may at least get a few screams out of kids who decide to sneak into the movie or watch it behind their parents’ backs.

            Annabelle Comes Home may satisfy purists of the Conjuring franchise and offer a few good scares, but compared to other installments of the series, it’s rather underwhelming and lacking. It’s better than the first Annabelle and The Nun, but not by a whole lot, it’s a loud spook-fest that might get a few screams in, but you’ll most likely forget about it after a while.