The first Annabelle told the story of how the demonic doll introduced in The Conjuring came to be. Annabelle: Creation tells … the story of how the demonic doll introduced in The Conjuring came to be, but this time it goes back further. Set in the 1950s, this prequel-sequel chronicles the original incarnation of the titular doll and how evil first became drawn to it.
Years after dollmaker Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia) and his wife Esther (Miranda Otto) lose their little daughter, Bee (Samara Lee), in a traffic accident, they take in Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Stigman) and a group of orphaned girls who become homeless after their orphanage closes. Quicker than you can say “don’t open that door to the room you were told to never go into, no, seriously, you’re really opening that door?!,” one of the girls unwittingly unleashes the evil force that possesses Bee’s doll, Annabelle.
From the outside, the Mullins’ desert home is the picture of dusty domesticity, framed almost like a homestead in a classic Western. It does not really look like a haunted house despite its dramatic design. It is the house’s interior— its elongated rooms, dark halls, dumbwaiter, wheelchair lift — that proves more foreboding, obviously even more so at night. This is a home where life and light once existed but have since disappeared in the years since Bee’s death.Sandberg definitely makes good use of this real estate, milking the house’s various attributes -- namely, the dumbwaiter and chair lift -- for maximum effect in the movie’s more chilling sequences. Polio-stricken Janice’s (Talitha Bateman) handicap generates many such suspenseful moments as she struggles to escape perilous situations. Less effective are some of the CGI moments; a shadowy, digital tendril creeping across a wall isn’t as effective as the film’s practical, small-scale scares (such as cutting back to the motionless Annabelle having suddenly changed position).
Having previously directed Lights Out, Sandberg knows that what’s left to the imagination -- and creating an atmosphere of dread – can be just as, if not more, effective. (The evil entity itself could have been more strongly defined. Yes, a demon is a demon, but one with some semblance of an identity or a motivation beyond being merely evil for the sake of it would have been stronger.)
None of these fright-house tricks would ultimately matter if I wasn't interested in the characters. The cast, particularly talented youngsters Bateman and Lulu Wilson, help elevate the material by breathing life into characters who are, on paper, thinly drawn. Bateman and Wilson, the latter the breakout of Ouija: Origin of Evil, anchor the film. I cared about them, Janice and Linda's friendship, and wanted them to find a good home (in this case, literally anywhere else that doesn’t harbor an evil entity).
Otto and LaPaglia have less screen time, with the former hidden from view for a good chunk of the time and the latter performing right up to the edge of creepy-crazy without quite overdoing it. Stephanie Stigman’s Sister Charlotte, while sweet and sympathetic, isn’t given too much to do, and her other orphans serve their function without necessarily making much of a splash.
