Annabelle: film review.

The premise of director John R. Leonetti’s Annabelle involves a demonically possessed porcelain doll that terrorises a young married couple and their newborn baby. Leonetti frames countless shots of the doll that creep closer and closer to its crackled face while high-pitched noises escalate on the soundtrack, a stylistic embellishment as cliche as a flickering candlelights or creaking hinges. You keep waiting for the damn thing to blink but it never does.

Audiences don’t have to have seen the film from which the doll originated -– it was featured in James Wan’s The Conjuring (2013) –- to understand the eponymous “ character” is not supposed to be nice, because this is one freaking looking toy.

The film’s key art and advertising suggest Annabelle is culprit and instigator, the central point around which all mayhem orbits. Envision a grotesque retro-looking doll running around with a sharp knife and you’ve pretty much nailed the movie, right?

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