Quickie Review:
Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton) are a happy couple who survive a home invasion by two satanic cultists attempting to perform a ritualistic murder. Following the horrific events, they start experiencing supernatural occurrences involving a doll owned by the couple. Let the horror begin or not. Annabelle is the clichéd example of bad horror movies. It is cheap in all respects, cheap acting, cheap story, and most of all cheap scares. Avoid this movie unless you want to fall asleep like a baby, which is obviously contradictory to this movie's objective.
Full Review:
For those who don't know, Annabelle is a prequel/spin-off from the movie The Conjuring directed by James Wan. The Conjuring was a great horror movie that kept me up at night, at least for a little while. So I was more than looking forward to Annabelle for a good scare this Halloween season. Instead I was hugely disappointed and felt I wasted my time.
Usually with my reviews I start with the positives, so here they are: haunting creature's design is interesting, and oh there is this one other freaky scene. That's it, that's all I got.
This movie was so bad that I felt like I was watching a parody of horror films. This movie could have been called Scary Movie 29 and it would've made more sense, but no, we have Annabelle. So let's talk about the acting shall we. Now for horror movies I don't need Oscar level acting, of course not. But they at least have to be functional enough to convey some kind of concern or fear. Instead the actors are more wooden than the doll we are supposed to be scared of. This brings me to the scariness of the film, or lack thereof. There are literally two scenes that were genuinely creepy and unique, but both of those combined comes to about a 1min in the total run time of the movie. The rest of the scares are all horror clichés like staring long at the doll with creepy music, or woman walks past a doorway, or now it's a little girl walking a past a doorway. Even the way they place the shots of the scenes are so obvious that you already looking at the spot you know the "scare" is supposed to come from.
All in all this is just lazy filmmaking. It's as if they took a bucket, filled it every basic horror trick, and dumped it on the big screen. I have litmus test for the effectiveness of these movies: do I leave the lights on longer than I should before going to bed and/or do I need to watch some comedy show episodes. Annabelle fails on both, that's also considering I walked home alone in the dark because my bike was broken. So if you looking for a good scary movie or even good movie in general, avoid this at all costs.
Check out more on my movie review blog The Stub Collector: http://thestubcollector.wordpress.com/
Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton) are a happy couple who survive a home invasion by two satanic cultists attempting to perform a ritualistic murder. Following the horrific events, they start experiencing supernatural occurrences involving a doll owned by the couple. Let the horror begin or not. Annabelle is the clichéd example of bad horror movies. It is cheap in all respects, cheap acting, cheap story, and most of all cheap scares. Avoid this movie unless you want to fall asleep like a baby, which is obviously contradictory to this movie's objective.
Full Review:
For those who don't know, Annabelle is a prequel/spin-off from the movie The Conjuring directed by James Wan. The Conjuring was a great horror movie that kept me up at night, at least for a little while. So I was more than looking forward to Annabelle for a good scare this Halloween season. Instead I was hugely disappointed and felt I wasted my time.
Usually with my reviews I start with the positives, so here they are: haunting creature's design is interesting, and oh there is this one other freaky scene. That's it, that's all I got.
This movie was so bad that I felt like I was watching a parody of horror films. This movie could have been called Scary Movie 29 and it would've made more sense, but no, we have Annabelle. So let's talk about the acting shall we. Now for horror movies I don't need Oscar level acting, of course not. But they at least have to be functional enough to convey some kind of concern or fear. Instead the actors are more wooden than the doll we are supposed to be scared of. This brings me to the scariness of the film, or lack thereof. There are literally two scenes that were genuinely creepy and unique, but both of those combined comes to about a 1min in the total run time of the movie. The rest of the scares are all horror clichés like staring long at the doll with creepy music, or woman walks past a doorway, or now it's a little girl walking a past a doorway. Even the way they place the shots of the scenes are so obvious that you already looking at the spot you know the "scare" is supposed to come from.
All in all this is just lazy filmmaking. It's as if they took a bucket, filled it every basic horror trick, and dumped it on the big screen. I have litmus test for the effectiveness of these movies: do I leave the lights on longer than I should before going to bed and/or do I need to watch some comedy show episodes. Annabelle fails on both, that's also considering I walked home alone in the dark because my bike was broken. So if you looking for a good scary movie or even good movie in general, avoid this at all costs.
Check out more on my movie review blog The Stub Collector: http://thestubcollector.wordpress.com/