ANNABELLE COMES HOME (2019)

Studio:      New Line Cinema
Director:    Gary Dauberman
Writer:      Gary Dauberman
Producer:  Peter Safran, James Wan
Stars:     Mckenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife, Michael Cimino, Samara Lee, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Curses and creatures haunt Judy Warren and her babysitter after a friend unintentionally unlocks the evil Annabelle doll.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While transporting the Annabelle doll back to their house, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren pass a fatal accident on the road. Lorraine sees a vision of a woman who died in the crash. Lorraine sees additional ghosts while stalled outside Maryville Cemetery shortly thereafter. One of the ghosts pushes Ed into the road where a truck nearly runs him over. Lorraine realizes the doll acts as a beacon for other malevolent spirits.

Father Gordon blesses the doll after the Warrens return home. Ed and Lorraine lock Annabelle inside a case made from chapel glass inside their artifact room.

One year later, Ed and Lorraine leave their daughter Judy alone with babysitter Mary Ellen for the weekend. At St. Thomas Catholic School, bully Anthony Rios teases Judy while classmates decline invitations to her upcoming birthday party because of Judy’s controversial parents. Having inherited her mother’s psychic sensitivity, Judy repeatedly sees visions of dead priest Father Michael Morrissey around school.

Mary Ellen’s best friend Daniela Rios, whose brother is Anthony, still blames herself for a car accident that killed her father while she was driving. Thinking something in the house may allow her to communicate with her father, Daniela invites herself to the Warren home while Mary Ellen babysits. Daniela and Judy bond as friends. Bob Palmeri, Mary Ellen’s crush who works at a grocery store, also stops by briefly.

Daniela sneaks into the artifact room and unlocks Annabelle’s case. A distraction draws Daniela back to the kitchen. Judy begins seeing glimpses of Annabelle throughout the house.

Mary Ellen encounters a ghost girl looking for Annabelle. Daniela sees her father’s ghost inside the house.

A bride in a bloody wedding dress haunts Judy in her bedroom. Judy wards off the entity with a crucifix. Mary Ellen learns Judy can see ghosts.

Daniela, Mary Ellen, and Judy go through several of Ed and Lorraine’s case files. Mary Ellen reads about ‘The Ferryman,’ an afterlife gatekeeper paid with coins placed on corpses who once killed a girl that looked like Mary Ellen. Daniela reads about ‘The Hellhound,’ a werewolf that possessed a man in England. Judy reads about the haunted wedding dress. Daniela asks Judy about Annabelle, but Judy refuses to discuss the doll.

Bob serenades Mary Ellen from outside by playing acoustic guitar. The girls don’t see the Hellhound chase Bob into a chicken coop through thick fog.

Daniela returns to the artifact room. Daniela puts a photo of her father inside a locket and tries contacting him once again. Daniela’s father appears to play the piano alongside her, but morphs into a bloody apparition. Daniela becomes trapped in the room while seeing her near future reflected inside a haunted TV.

Mary Ellen encounters the Ferryman and several corpses with coins over their eyes. A paranormal presence also attacks Judy, who sees a shadow of Annabelle grow into a horned demon.

Mary Ellen and Judy regroup. Mary Ellen tries calling Lorraine for help, but the voice on the other end tells them to give Judy’s soul to Annabelle.

Mary Ellen and Judy find Daniela in the artifact room. Judy realizes Annabelle is causing the paranormal activity and must be returned to her case. Daniela apologizes for unleashing the evil by explaining she only wanted to speak to her father. The three girls flee the room when paranormal activity intensifies.

The Hellhound traps Judy in a car when she goes outside to retrieve Mary Ellen’s asthma medication. Bob rescues Judy.

Judy regroups with Mary Ellen. To find Annabelle, Judy follows a vision of the dead priest. After becoming entranced by haunted samurai armor, Mary Ellen braves a corridor of coin corpses to retrieve the doll and bring it back to Judy.

The Bride possesses Daniela by violently vomiting blood into her mouth. Wearing the cursed wedding dress, Daniela attacks Mary Ellen. Hands emerge from a Feeley Meeley board game to grab at Judy. Judy turns on a film of her father conducting an exorcism, which banishes the evil spirit from Daniela.

Judy rushes to the artifact room carrying Annabelle, but the horned demon prevents her from opening the case. The demon begins sucking out Judy’s soul. Mary Ellen tries to help, but is supernaturally thrown against a wall. Judy saves herself with a crucifix. While Judy uses the cross to ward off ghosts, Mary Ellen and Daniela return Annabelle to the case and lock it.

Ed and Lorraine return home for Judy’s birthday. Mary Ellen, Daniela, and Mary Ellen’s new boyfriend Bob arrive for the party. Judy is pleasantly surprised when numerous classmates including Anthony, who apologizes for his bullying, show up too.

Lorraine gives Daniela the photo of her father she put in the locket. Lorraine explains Daniela’s dad told her where it was. Lorraine also relays a message assuring Daniela the accident wasn’t her fault and her father wants her to be at peace.

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Review:

It’s amusing that The Conjuring Universe built itself on the supposedly “true” case files of controversial demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Yet of the seven connected films released thus far, only two of them link to actual people while the other five are entirely made up. That really says something about how uneventfully devoid of paranormal activity those files must be that they merely motivate props without offering meaty material for entertaining terror tales.

Prop is the role played by the titular doll in “Annabelle Comes Home.” True to her treatment in “Annabelle” (review here) and “Annabelle: Creation” (review here), Annabelle only moves when no one looks. She’s not a killer kid’s toy like Chucky or “Puppet Master’s” Blade. She’s not even possessed. As Lorraine Warren’s fictional incarnation puts it, she’s simply “a beacon for other spirits.”

That explains why Annabelle’s inclusion in the third movie bearing her name feels like a title-based obligation. Instead of focusing on “what should Annabelle get into this time,” it seems her stewards only asked, “how do we force Annabelle to fit into this loosely related setup for something else?”

If my home hosted the world’s largest private collection of haunted artifacts, leaving my young daughter alone with her teenage babysitter for a weekend would never cross my mind. Yet that’s what Ed and Lorraine do when they drop out after the pre-title sequence, during the lead-up to their daughter’s birthday no less, to swing the spotlight toward Judy Warren and family friend Mary Ellen.

Mckenna Grace marks a perfect choice for Judy by being as infectiously affable as her onscreen parents Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. Psychic sensitivity inherited from mom gives Judy an ability to see ghosts. Coupled with Ed and Lorraine’s local reputation, Judy’s peculiar pedigree earns bullying in equal measure to rejected invites for her upcoming party.

Even though outsider status darkens clouds overhead, Judy only mopes for a moment. Her faith assures her to hang in there, and Grace puts that patience into compelling smiles earning easy endearment as a relatable kid maturing through unusually awkward circumstances. You probably can’t recall specific orphans from “Annabelle: Creation,” but you will remember “Annabelle Comes Home’s” confidently constructed characters. Their likability quickly turns into the film’s greatest strength, with Judy/Grace sitting in the nexus.

Madison Iseman molds Mary Ellen from Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode. Actions are either cute or crafty, although adversity unlocks resilient behavior fortifying her as an empowered protector. Mary Ellen also gets a giddily goofy romance with Bob (Michael Cimino), who pops in whenever writer/director Gary Dauberman calls for a side serving of comic relief. Bob’s scattered appearances deflate more tension than intended, but his personality becomes a crowd-pleaser while “Bob’s got balls” becomes the movie’s tongue-in-cheek mantra.

Judy and Mary Ellen are too goody-goody to be given the burden of unleashing Annabelle. That dishonor falls to Mary Ellen’s sassy BFF Daniela (Katie Sarife). Daniela might succumb to stereotyping if Sarife didn’t have such an appealing presence to perk up her personality. Daniela’s reasons for futzing in the Warrens’ off-limits room also get justifiably juiced by a heartfelt, albeit familiar, backstory. Daniela just wants to contact her father whose death she faults herself for. Surely Ed and Lorraine hide something that can help.

Daniela of course unlocks Annabelle before being drawn away by a conveniently timed distraction. With the cast of characters sufficiently hitched to audience investment, “Annabelle Comes Home” now becomes an anthology of spooky imagery and pop scares that whirl in a loop before returning all of the toys to where they started. Annabelle’s “evil” attracts appearances from a British werewolf, an afterlife ferryman, a bloody ghost bride, even a haunted television. With Annabelle herself hardly anywhere to be found, the movie doesn’t do much to advance her mythology. It’s more of an audition reel for various creatures and curses to see if any of them stick enough to warrant another spinoff.

“Annabelle Comes Home” fills out fine as a visual freak show. Dauberman delivers memorably cinematic scares such as suddenly dropping coins from a ferryman corpse to a cascade of shadows transforming Annabelle into a demon on Judy’s bedroom wall. Staying in the spirit of “actual” ghosts, other scares are of the creeping around the house with things knocking around variety. Because what demon in search of a soul wouldn’t want to waste time with such mundane acts as tipping over a glass of milk in the kitchen?

Beneath enjoyably eerie sights and sounds, weird editing arrangements flummox the flow of limited fiction. For instance, an intense early scene terrifies Judy with the knife-wielding bride. Not long after, Judy completely calms to a point where she can casually review family case files with Mary Ellen and Daniela like she wasn’t almost just murdered by a ghost. Digging into the files should additionally incentivize Daniela to break into the artifact room, not take place after all of this other action.

Another sequence has the trio selecting a board game to play. They’re only on their first turn when Bob and a stoner pizza delivery guy ring the bell for one of Bob’s ha-ha intermissions. Cut to Judy watching TV alone on the couch. Where did everyone else suddenly go? The board game is the strangest sort of Chekhov’s gun because it sets up a fake-out to take place before a proper payoff, making its strange setup even odder.

Appearances from Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as Ed and Lorraine are a prime selling point for “Annabelle Comes Home.” They aren’t around much though, basically only bookending the movie in a prologue and epilogue.

Fortunately, the three leading ladies collectively cough up copious charisma. Their energetic chemistry keeps “Annabelle Comes Home” engaging even when its stride slows or frights read as feeble. Quality characterization is a prime saving grace, which doesn’t mean to insist the movie would fall on its face otherwise. “Annabelle Comes Home” is merely more of a popcorn-and-candy lark than a nightmare-inducing fright film. That appears to be where this series wants to go anyway. Meanwhile, the franchise’s desire to become a creepy carnival of monsters and madness pushes Annabelle further and further into the background.

Review Score: 60

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