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4/10
You expect the horrifying chills in a sequence, it doesn’t meet your expectations. You expect it to be funny while building up the promised horror, here it ends up meeting your expectations!
After an irrelevant pre – title sequence, two paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorrine Warren (Vera Farmiga) bring the sinister doll Annabelle to their home, to lock it in the artifacts room. What follows the same is the doll seeking a soul to possess, which makes for rest of the narrative of this third Annabelle movie and seventh offering in Conjuring universe. The spooky sounds, a haunted house, some random ghosts, blood spills – the movie has them all.
Still, the utter random and amateur way these all have been blended together and placed in the narrative made me feel only apathy as it ends abruptly using a forced loud execution. This isn’t surprising though, as it’s not a new feat. of the Conjuring movies that succeeded the first one. Michael Burgess shoots almost the entire movie in low-light, with Joseph Bishara’s score infusing the hushes to escalate the fearsome appeal, but the storytelling undoes it all while paying homage to the bad horror filmmaking of bygone era.
Little of the horror is injected in bits during the sequences that involve Warrens’ daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) being home alone with her babysitter Mary Allen (Madison Iseman) and her neighbour Daniella (Katie Sarife). One tries getting involved in that terrifying setting, but our director Gary Dauberman chooses to simultaneously explore the romantic and comic dimension of storytelling in those coveted jumpscare moments, bringing in Bob (Michael Cimeno) to banter with Mary. The little interest that I had somehow developed, faded away, considering how frivolous those sequences eventually become.
The characters also seem too detached from the mood of the eerie proceedings at times, as the actors appear to refrain perpetually from expressing the basic feel of panic on their faces. How the story will end is obviously a no – brainer for the audience, but atleast gripping them for a brief runtime of 105 minutes seemed too tough a nut for the makers to crack, as the whatever tale keeps on dragging deadly sans redemption. Sticking to the stamped template of supernatural exorcism and psychological terror to recreate the nightmares the first Conjuring movie still gives me, it all looks recurring and merely bland after a time in the narrative.
It’s sheer excruciating to see a franchise, that has proudly scared umpteen souls worldwide, to sadly plunge to a new low with its latest installment. Though promoted as a thrilling horror, the movie has unprecedented comic reliefs, unintended musical sequences, unrequired romantic banter, and ironically falls flat while going loud to deliver the thrills and chills. However the scary Annabelle managed coming home, I strongly feel that it should have stayed away from the theaters.
Watch its Trailer here : Annabelle Comes Home (2019) Trailer – YouTube
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True, this one just makes you wait for a jumpscare and it never happens.
We experienced this scam together.