The Conjuring from 2013 can regarded as one of the best (and most successful) horror movies to have come out in the past ten years. However, with a successful launch of a franchise comes a flurry of sequels/spin-offs, which have ranged dramatically on the quality spectrum. I’ve seen almost every one of the films in the Conjuring franchise, with the serviceable Annabelle from 2014 being one of the first films for me to review on DagonDogs.com. Having seen the depths that this franchise would reach, I didn’t have high hopes for Annabelle Comes Home. Apparently, no one else did because all I heard after this movie came out was that it “wasn’t as bad as they expected,” or “it was actually pretty good.”

Pros

• Decent acting from the young cast

• Clever use of some horror tropes and camera work to add some flair to the experience

• Takes a while to get going, but once it starts it doesn’t let up until the film’s end

Cons

• Haunted house movie that feels like a bit of a cash-grab-layup to bring attention to all the other objects in the Warren house and set up for endless sequels

• Premise as to why everything goes to hell is weak

• Jokes and humor tend to fall flat

• Messy or somewhat uninspired methods of resolving some spooky threats

Plot & Thoughts

Judy Warren (Mckenna Grace), daughter to Ed and Loraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) is going through the typical experience of transitioning from child to teenager, i.e. bullies at school and general awkwardness. What is not so typical is that her parents have a reputation for paranormal activity hunting. This unintentionally makes her a bit of a loner, since most kids seem to regard her and her family as weird. After Ed and Loraine return to their home with the infamous Annabelle doll that manages to nearly kill Ed in the process, it’s not long before they have to go on the road again. They lock up Annabelle in the case in their paranormal vault room and leave Judy in the care of her babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman).

Mary Ellen, being the friendly babysitter that she is, tries to make Judy’s lonely birthday weekend without friends or family more fun. They play some games, bake a cake, and order some pizza. Also, Mary Ellen’s friend Daniela (Katie Sarife) joins the festivities to cheer up Judy but seems to have ulterior motives as well. While the other two go outside, Daniela sneaks into the paranormal vault, hoping that the ghostly presences there will be a means of communicating with her recently deceased father. In the process of her amateur communication with the dead, she touches a lot of things in the vault and accidentally releases Annabelle. This quickly turns the Warren home into a haunted house full of demonic objects, and the girls have to figure out how to survive the ordeal.

The idea of making the Warren home into a haunted house of horrors is not a bad one. I commend Annabelle Comes Home for making clever use of the idea and utilizing many of the various objects in the Warren vault to create an experience similar to a haunted house ride at a fair. That being said, my cynicism did not prevent me from assuming this was also with the intention of setting the franchise up for more and more sequels about every object that has any sort of personality in that room. Regardless, what is used and utilized in this movie is done with more nuance than I would have expected. Having seen some of the weaker entries in the franchise, it was nice to see at least a little more creativity in the scares and effects. If I were grading Annabelle Comes Home solely on the particular moments that involved the creepy objects, creative use of the camera, and false scares, it would get at least a B. However, while those sorts of factors are crucial to a quality experience with a horror movie—perhaps the most important part—they aren’t the only elements you need in order to make a good one.

The script itself is weak, to say the least. The whole premise behind how Annabelle gets out in the first place I never could reconcile with, due to how illogical it was. Having Daniela be the fool who tampers does nothing for the plot, or her character for that matter. If you took out the scene of her breaking in and setting Annabelle free, your experience of the movie would not change, which demonstrates how weak the motivation for her is, from the perspective of a script. They could have made it “a burglar breaks in and accidentally opens the doll’s case” and it would have felt just as dumb.

There are also just some small details that didn’t make sense from a logical perspective but were there mainly for the convenience of a plot point or a scary moment that would happen later. For example, why would the Warrens leave the keys to this most dangerous room out in the open on the desk when they knew they had teenagers coming over? Or, why would the Warrens leave a film reel of an exorcism in a projector if for no reason other than to use it later in the film as a scary method of resolving something? It’s all rather lazy writing meant to move the plot along. Not to mention, there are some rather pathetic attempts at humor in this movie that just did not land. Maybe I wasn’t in the right state of mind when I watched it, but the jokes were not funny at all to me, including all the references to “big balls.”

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Annabelle Comes Home is a small haunted house ride with some clever moments of creepiness, decent acting from the young cast, and some poor writing. The end result is a film that barely secures itself in the better half of the extensive Conjuring franchise. It doesn’t do much to justify its existence, but it’s still enjoyable enough to warrant a watch. If given the option of watching this or other Conjuring spin-offs, this sits higher on the list than most.