What is it about demonically-possessed dolls that scare us so? Is it that something meant to bring such youthful enjoyment is actually a thing of satanic evil? The fear these films inspire is equal to the joy audiences seem to get from comedies about living. Whatever the reason, scary doll flicks have become a sub-genre unto themselves in everything from Child's Play to the vastly underrated Puppet Master franchise. In Annabelle, a prequel to last year's mind-fraying horror The Conjuring, they prove to still be worth a few chills in the bones...but only just a few.
A brief interlude in The Conjuring is the inspiration for this smaller-budgeted thriller from John R. Leonetti, the cinematographer who gave the source film its distinctly vintage look. He shoots for a more traditional style with Annabelle, fitting because it's more of a traditional sort of horror. Footage from The Conjuring, minus its stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga (probably for budget reasons), reminds us that the possessed doll is now locked behind glass at the home of Ed and Lorraine Warren, where it sits maniacally smiling. Flashing back to bright and cheery California, we meet expectant couple Mia (Annabelle Wallis, name purely coincidental) and her square-jawed doctor husband, John (Ward Horton). Their new neighbors have a daughter who hooked up with satanic Manson-esque cultists, and when she violently returns to the neighborhood she leaves Mia stabbed and bleeding out. The intruders are shot, one with the then-innocent (but still creepy) Annabelle doll in her possession. Blood drips into its eye. There's something scrawled on the wall. This isn't going to turn out well. Some weird mojo is going on in the house, and that Annabelle doll is always nearby even when it shouldn't be. 
And that darn Annabelle doll, with its distant stare through cold porcelain eyes, is worth a few nightmares whether it gets up and walks around or not. It's actually scarier that we never really see it in action. The mere presence of it is enough, and Leonetti knows how to shoot it to the maximum scare effect, using old school angles and plenty of jump scares. What he doesn't do is vary the routine all that much, and it becomes easy to get attuned to the director's rhythms. Annabelle isn't the psychological powerhouse of The Conjuring; it needs the element of surprise to be effective and that does get lost along the way. Echoes of Rosemary's Baby edge their way in to Gary Dauberman's thin screenplay, but are disappointingly never followed through on even though it seems like a natural course to explore. But that would require a bit more attention to character detail than this film is interested in. When veteran actress Alfre Woodard turns up as a guilt-ridden mother she's given little to display her talents with. But Wallis makes for a strong, plucky heroine and protective mother. Her fight goes beyond the supernatural and into chauvinist notions of crazy, paranoid broads in need of a good shrink or a stint in a rubber room. Leonetti and Dauberman don't do enough with that promising angle, either, but what the film does is deepen The Conjuring experience without cheapening the franchise. While it doesn't quite rattle the brain like The Conjuring did, Annabelle works up enough frights that you may want to get that doll collection out of the house. Rating: 3 out of 5
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