It’s
become fashionable to hate and criticize the blockbuster horror movie Annabelle
(2014). By contrast, its source material, The Conjuring (2013) was
widely and exaggeratedly-praised. So perhaps some critics felt they had to come
down hard on the sequel for the sake of “balance.”
What
the reviewers giveth, they also taketh away.
I
have no horse in this race, but it appears to me that Annabelle (2014) is one
of those horror movies that can’t win, at least in terms of critical response. The
movie adopts a slow-burn approach to its horror storytelling, and takes care
not to reveal the doll committing violence on-screen. This approach to the
material apparently upset several critics, who feel like they were owed a movie
in which they could see the creepy doll going around attacking people.
These
critics term Annabelle boring, and are longing, apparently, for Chucky-style
carnage.
Had
the movie taken that more overt, less nuanced approach, however, I feel the
same critics would have likely complained that the movie wasn’t scary, just
violent and action-packed.
Horror
movies fall into this trap a lot. Critics don’t actually like or appreciate
horror as a genre very much, and so will use any argument that they think will
stick in order to demean a film of this type.
Annabelle is damned if does, damned if it doesn’t.
My
impression of Annabelle is that the director, John Leonetti, worked over-time
to keep the mysterious aspects of the doll alive, and quite successfully so, while
also generating some significantly scary moments throughout.
One
scene involving a hotel basement, a storage cage, and an elevator, is beautifully
and effectively staged, for example. The
moment builds to a fever pitch of terror, and really gets the blood running.
As
I indicate above, many critics complained that the movie is boring, but “boring”
isn’t a legitimate criticism, in my book.
No movie is boring if you meet it half way, or choose to engage with it.
Some movies are flat, and I suppose that makes us feel bored. But generally, I
feel that, as viewers and reviewers, we are responsible for our own viewing experience,
and whether something is boring or not.
For
me, Annabelle
is an intriguing and well-crafted film because, outside the horror, it attempts
to erect a sense of place and time. The
film is set in 1970, in the age of Charles Manson, and many of the details it presents
(in terms of The Family, and in terms of daytime TV), help to forge a feeling
for that span. I have some personal
memories of the seventies (though from a little later on, around 1975 or so…)
that Annabelle
successfully awakened for me, and so I feel it is more carefully and
intelligently crafted than many reviewers suggest.
Indeed,
I’ve seen reviews that call Annabelle one of the worst films of
the year. That is, quite simply, a terrible exaggeration, and thus unfair. The movie is often run-of-the-mill or
predictable in nature, but from time to time it really pulls off a
spectacularly creepy moment, or does a good job of capturing the vibe of its
seventies age.
Honestly,
I don’t know what else people expect of studio horror movie at this point. Chucky has cornered the market on cussing,
murderous dolls, and it’s encouraging to see another “killer doll” movie
attempt to take things in a somewhat different direction.
So
while I wouldn’t claim Annabelle matches the artistic
success of The Babadook (2014) or The Battery (2014) or Honeymoon
(2014), I see no reason to attack it as terminally-flawed either. Instead, it simply
is what it is: an effectively made, mildly generic, entertaining horror movie.
“Mothers
are closer to God than any living creature.”
In
1970, a young expectant woman, Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and her husband, John
(Ward Horton), a doctor in training, plan for the arrival of their first
baby. John brings Mia home a gift: a
collectible doll she has wanted for a long time.
One
night, however, fate takes an ugly turn as deranged cultists break into Mia and
John’s house, and attack them. Mia is stabbed, but survives, as does her baby. The
female cultist, Annabelle Higgins, dies in close proximity to the doll, and Mia
wants it destroyed. John throws the blood-stained
doll in the garbage.
After
a mysterious fire at their house, Mia and John move to an apartment building.
While they unpack, they discover the cast-off doll in the last box.
Mia
decides, this time, to keep it.
That
decision has fateful consequences, however, as strange and frightening events
begin to occur. Mia comes to fear that a demonic force using the doll as a
conduit seeks to steal the soul of her baby, Leah…
“You’ve
got to lock the doors. It’s a different world now.”
I would be lying if I claimed I felt no personal connection to some aspects of Annabelle.
Many
scenes in the film involve Mia staying at home, on bed rest, watching day-time
soaps such as General Hospital. While watching episodes, she intermittently
sews clothes on a sewing machine.
I
possess very vivid memories of my own mother, in the 1970s, sitting at her
sewing machine while watching the very same show. I even recognized one of the characters on
that program – Jessie -- during Annabelle. It sounds like a small thing,
but it isn’t.
In
the early seventies, few Americans, at least in my town, could afford to shop and
buy new clothes at stores. Instead, Moms sewed clothes for their spouses and
children all the time, after buying huge spools of material at the store. The
film recalls this time and this economic reality without making a big point of
it.
Similarly,
my Mom went to work as a teacher in the late 1970s, but I vividly remember days
staying home and having to watch One Life to Live, General Hospital,
and Edge
of Night. Back then, there was no cable and no streaming. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the afternoons were
dominated by sudsy soaps of this type.
Also,
I conjured up another forgotten memory during Annabelle. My sister owned
a tall blond-haired doll she named Karen. I hated that doll. Karen was roughly
as tall as I was, and when I got up in the middle of the night to use the
bathroom, I would have to pass my sister’s open doorway and Karen too, silently
standing guard nearby.
Even
the film’s news footage about Manson and the mad-dog cultist aspect of Annabelle
capture a time in the culture that my friend and mentor, the late
Johnny Byrne, termed “the wake-up from the
hippie dream.” Annabelle is about
that exact epoch in our culture; when an idea of beauty and peace got perverted
into something scary; when people started locking their doors…out of fear.
So
perhaps I’m pre-disposed to like Annabelle since it captures, for me,
something of my personal experience as a kid growing up in the 1970s.
But,
importantly, not every movie about the seventies gets the details right, or
activates the memory in the way this horror films does. For instance, I’m tired of all the 1970s
movies and TV shows featuring a “key” party for adults who want to cheat on their
spouses.
So
far as I know, this kind of event never happened to anyone I knew in those
days, and yet it has been accepted as fact of middle class life, when it
clearly wasn’t. Rather, the key party was part of a narrow experience, and then
picked up by the pop culture as somehow signifying life in the 1970s.
Annabelle focuses on little details instead,
ones that create the impression of reality. The rat-a-tat-tat of a family sewing
machine, for instance, or a newscast about “cults,” and worrying about Charles
Manson. These moments seem much more intriguing and world-building than the
presence of simple jump scare. I could
go watch Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
with Joel, if that’s what I wanted in my horror: pure mechanics.
I’ve
also read complaints that the main characters in Annabelle somehow aren’t
fully individualized or interesting enough to carry the movie. Again, I suspect this kind of criticism comes
from the general critic’s lack of understanding of horror. Characters must be distinguished, it’s true,
but also be generic enough so that we can identify with them; we can fill the
gaps with our experience and thus put ourselves in their shoes.
Consider
the characters of The Evil Dead (1983), for instance. There’s two sets of
boyfriends and
girlfriends, and an odd girl out.
How
much do we really know about their backgrounds?
Almost nothing.
And
that’s good, because we can then imprint our own fears and angst upon them.
The
characters in Annabelle, a pregnant mother-to-be and a largely absent
father-to-be are distinguished enough that the audience cares about them, and
that’s what is most important. They aren’t
the most colorful folks ever to headline a movie, but they don’t need to
be. I often have a difficult time watching
films set in the 1970s, because modern actors just don’t look right for that
era. They’re too big, or too muscular. The
actors in this film actually look right: skinny and not-idealized, though very
young.
And
the great Alfre Woodard is also here, as Evelyn, a friend of Mia’s. Woodard
tells a heart-breaking story in the film, one regarding her daughter, and it
feels so true and potent in her hands that it’s hard to argue that all Annabelle
cares about is slick entertainment.
Woodard’s sincerity in the part takes the movie to a grander playing
field, to one concerning the decisions we make here during our lives, and the
reasons behind them.
Some
moments in Annabelle are genuinely startling, or suspenseful. Early on, Mia awakes from a slumber, and
gazes through the neighbor’s bedroom window.
The events that unfold next are sudden and shocking, and will make you
leap out of your seat. It’s not so much
the jump scare effect that makes the scene work, but the idea of seeing something
you are not prepared for, or that is inexplicable.
Likewise,
in my introduction, I mentioned the scene set in the basement. Mia takes an item down to storage in her
apartment building, and sees some horrible creature dwelling there, in the
dark. She runs back to the elevator,
gets in and presses the button to return to her floor. The elevator door shuts.
But the elevator goes nowhere. And the doors re-open.
She
frantically hits the button again, peering out into the dark, scanning for that…thing.
This
chronology repeats three or four times, until it becomes clear that the elevator
is going nowhere, and Mia must tread out into the dark, and find another exit.
The
scene plays on the (probably subconscious) fear that we can’t escape a pursuer;
that the tools we have built (like an elevator) are useless in the face of
something supernatural and malevolent.
The
horror scene continues and builds as Mia runs up a staircase, a demonic
creature lurking behind her. In a flash
of lightning, its face is revealed, and you’ll definitely feel a shiver. The
moment works just as intended.
At
other times, the horror touches are downright poetic. Mia again climbs her
apartment stairs at one juncture, and diabolical drawings -- sketched by neighboring
kids, or perhaps Annabelle -- land in her path like wind-strewn flower
petals. Each new arrival is more disturbing
than the last.
I
have some questions about the narrative in Annabelle (including precisely how
the doll and the demon are connected), but for the most part, my concerns are
immaterial. The film creates a memorable world, and crafts colorful and dynamic
scenes of terror.
Would
a better film feature sub-text that relates to us today, living now?
Yeah,
it probably would.
Annabelle
isn’t a great
horror film. Instead, it’s a better-than-average, serviceable one that gets the
job done. It gives you the creeps, and
it doesn’t do it in the most craven, predictable way possible, with an
ambulatory doll stalking victims. Instead,
a creepy seventies vibe dominates the picture, and that’s a good thing.
So
go into this one with your eyes open and know what you’re watching here: a
professionally-shot and meticulously edited Hollywood horror movie. Annabelle
passes the time, hits a few high notes, and then it’s over and you
forget about it.
At
least the movie makes sense, which is something one can’t necessarily say of The
Conjuring.
Actually,
I’ll take Annabelle and its slow-burn horror over The Conjuring’s supernatural
gymnastics any day.
I must confess I found this movie to be quite forgettable. It's about on the same level as Ouija for me, except that Ouija looked a bit nicer visually. I'm really not a fan of the cold, sterile film look. This one looked like it was very obviously shot on digital and that tends to drag me out of any movie that's supposed to be set in the past. To me, it really didn't feel like it took place in the '70s. Part of this is probably because I don't have any connection to growing up in the '70s (especially not in the US, since I'm from Europe), so for me, there's no nostalgia factor. If anything, I'd be more nostalgic towards Ouija since it was something of a '80s throwback.
ReplyDeleteIn Annabelle's defense, I didn't think it was a boring movie at all. I completely disliked its visual look, but in terms of pace, it was fine. It had some nice moments - the basement scene, the build-up to the kitchen fire, the demon holding up the doll, the part with the drawings - but most of it was just too by the numbers. And even those nice moments weren't exactly great moments - not really the kind of moments that could elevate the film above its generic roots.
It is nice, however, to see shout-outs to The Babadook, The Battery and Honeymoon. All great horror films, and combined, they probably made less money than Annabelle did in its first weekend. Now that's just tragic.
Ratko H.
Sounds like this one might be worth watching for me. The slow, ever rising tide of unease is the sort of horror that actually does scare me. The original Amityville Horror really is kind of a cheap, hacky manipulative film but it still makes me feel uncomfortable if I watch it alone at night. I will also be interested to see how well this one captures the 70's. As you say, many films get previous eras wrong. I have also noticed how often the actors just look wrong. Even professional actors and models back in the 70's didn't look as pretty as the leads in that awful Amityville Horror remake. I remember seeing a film called Eve and the Fire Horse (not a fantasy film by the way despite the title) which I really liked for many reasons but one of the things I just loved about it was how well they put me back in the 70's Vancouver I remember from my own childhood.
ReplyDeleteWhere I grew up lots of mothers made clothes too. Our childhoods took place in the time when most households transitioned from having one income earner to needing two income earners in order to keep up with declining real wages despite steady increases in productivity.
I started out taking issue with your statement about no movie being boring and how it's all up to the viewer to engage with it. Then I realized that I once watched The Beast Of Yucca Flats twice in a row because halfway through the first viewing I started to wonder whether the narrator's lines ever formed a Haiku.