Review of Annabelle: Creation (2017) by Richard S — 21 Mar 2018

I was never a fan of Annabelle, it just felt like a rushed cliched spin-off riding on the success of the first Conjuring movie. This begs the question, why would I watch another Annabelle movie if the first was so bad? Well that's down to the director, David F Sandberg who first came to my attention with the pant-wetting fright fest Lights Out. Therefore, I thought perhaps he could turn a movie about a possessed doll, which lets face it has been done 100 times before, into something genuinely scary.

The end of the film leads straight into the first Annabelle movie but it begins almost 20 years earlier as a couple lose their daughter in a tragic accident and later believe they have made contact with her again and agree for her to take possession of a doll which her father made. Turns out it's not their daughter who is now living in their house and the doll but something far more sinister. Storywise, this isn't presenting anything new but it's the way the director brings the scares to the screen that keeps you hooked. In Lights Out he used lighting to bring the scares, here it is a brilliant use of sound. I thought the film was very creepy, had some decent jump scares and it has probably had a major effect on sales of bunkbeds for the forseeable future.