'Annabelle: Creation' REVIEW: A frightening resurgence for the Annabelle story

'Annabelle: Creation' is the newest summer horror film directed by David F. Sandberg who also directed another really good horror film last year called Lights Out (2016) and starsstars Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson and Anthony LaPaglia . The film is also a prequel to Annabelle (2014) which is also a prequel to The Conjuring (2013). With this film, I had no idea what to think going in. I saw the first Annabelle film in theaters and I thought it was dull, slow and just weak overall with the exception of a good jump scare. When I heard there was going to be another one of these Annabelle movies, I thought it was going to be even worse that the first and it's just going to be a loud annoying series of jump scares. But, I thought the same way with the second Ouija movie Ouija: Origin of Evil (2014) which turned out to be a millions times better than that garbage of a movie Ouija (2014). I can say the same here.

12 years after a couple lost a very young daughter, a group people that comprise of a nun and 6 orphan girls are let in to stay at the couples home. When one of the young girls finds a mysterious room and sees the Annabelle doll in a room surrounded by passages from the bible, things start to go terribly wrong. Sound familiar? It's every haunted house/demon story you've seen, but just done effectively.

Among the goods that the original Annabelle wishes it has is that it a fun and frightening horror film with jump scares that most definitely work. The distinction between jump scares in good horror films and in shit horror films is that when the loud obnoxious sound comes, it is accompanied with imagery that is supposed to be frightening to the audiences. This film goes with the effective route and gets me every time. With a cast that contains largely unknown actors and actresses, they are all really good in this film and are able to bring the emotion necessary when it comes to being haunted by the demonic creature lurking in the house. The film has also very good cinematography that consists of mostly darkness suggesting that doom is being blanketed over the orphans. It knows how to generate tension despite sometimes things may not be happening, but that sense of dread is carries throughout the film. Like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) it has an ending that attaches itself nicely into the first Annabelle movie.

The most glaring con that I have with the film is that it's a story you've seen many times before. There isn't anything much that differentiate it from other horror films, maybe except the look of the Annabelle doll. It's structured like every horror film which does make it kind of boring at times because the film itself doesn't do anything new. There are also side characters that have no reason to be there and don't do anything to propel the plot. Some of the orphan girls particularly the older ones sometimes come off a little bit too mean to the main orphan girls.

Overall, I thought that this was a massive improvement over the other Annabelle film due to it's well staged jump scares and atmosphere. The film-makers could have excluded some of the characters even though they don't pose a threat to the overall plot. It may have most of the modern day horror movie cliches, but I could tell that its main objective is to be an effectively scary horror film.

'Annabelle: Creation' gets a B+