Annabelle Creation

Watching horror movies inside a crowded theater is actually a funny experience. You get to hear the reaction from people and we laugh at ourselves after every time a scary sequence gets finished. Annabelle 2 aka Annabelle Creation is no different from that. You will be blurring your eyes, trying to guess the point the ghost will appear and will question the thought process of the characters. Well that has been the way things have been happening in this genre and franchise, and with a relatively better making compared to the first part, this prequel keeps you at the edge of your seat.

The Mullins family is the prime focus this time. The couple who lived in a big house along with their daughter Annabelle was living a happy life until Annabelle got killed in a car accident. Annabelle Creation shows us the events that happen in the house of Mullins after 12 years from the death of Annabelle, when a group of orphans came there to stay with the husband and wife.

Unlike the other films in the Conjuring franchise, this movie doesn’t have that beginning where they would mention an actual incident. So the pure fictional story has the clichés one would expect in a horror film. Recently I saw this standup comedy bit from Jaspreet Singh where he teases the horror movie clichés. Everything he mentioned in that was there in this film too. Kids in this movie are very similar to adults in almost all the horror films. They know something is not right, they got scared once, they saw something creepy and they know that the door was locked during the day. But still when a sound comes from that spooky room, they have to go and check who that was and that too alone. Thankfully director David F Sandberg has certain tricks in his pocket to scare us through the visuals. That along with quality performances we see on screen is the main reason why Annabelle Creation manages to create an impression at the end.

Talitha Bateman and Lulu Wilson as Janice and Linda respectively are the key characters in this movie. These two child actors have that fine quality in them to make their performances look genuine on screen. Stephanie Sigman as Sister Charlotte, Anthony LaPaglia as Samuel Mullins and Miranda Otto as Esther Mullins were fine in their characters.

David F Sandberg who made an impressive debut last year with the movie Lights Out has definitely made the movie better than the first part. Even within the usual template of the story he has managed to understand the pulse of the viewer and successfully infuses the scary moments in to the sequences. The production design of the film looks great. The screenplay follows the usual treatment in narrating the story, but manages to give a closer look at most of the characters we see on screen. Cinematography and cuts were fine in maintaining the intrigue. We get to see references to other characters in the franchise like the Valak.

Annabelle Creation is indeed scary. And looking at the recent success of the films in this genre, the narrative being predictable isn’t a significant demerit as long as the scares are effective.

Rating: 3/5