Annabelle Comes Home

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

Annabelle Comes Home is the eighth spawn of The Conjuring franchise and it certainly lives up to “youngest” child stereotype: an energetic entertainer. The film begins where viewers might think and the story of Annabelle comes to a neat and tidy closing, but this is far from the truth. The results of Annabelle’s last-ditch effort to devour an innocent soul are entertaining, outlandish and, at times, even cute. The successes of Annabelle Comes Home transcends its shortcomings (too much exposition) and come together to form 100 minutes of humor, humanity and a stable of creatures designed to foil and spoil the heart and soul (pun intended) of humanity.

The film pays homage to the most effective horror tropes, phantom phones, cute babysitters, “gifted” children and troubled, precocious teenagers who (for the life of them) can’t keep their hands off of the devil’s playthings. When Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farminga) gain custody of the cursed doll, the entity within her has one more bout of devilish fun before being laid to rest in its blessed glass house. In the wake of her destruction, other totems and cursed artifacts from the Warren’s home are unleashed on its young, unsuspecting inhabitants while the demonologists are out of town.  Annabelle Comes Home follows the story of Judy (Mckenna Grace), daughter of Ed and Lorraine as she reconciles her own blossoming Mediumship, the bravest babysitter to ever exist, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), her cute soon-to-be boyfriend Bob (Michael Cimino), and the troubled Daniela (Katie Sarife) as they struggle to survive a night of pure terror. Daniela, having just lost her father in a tragic car accident, is desperate to feel close to him again. Upon learning about the Warren’s profession, Daniela inserts herself into her friend Mary Ellen’s sleepover with Judith and slips into the room of cursed artifacts. Vulnerable to manipulation and open to the presence of otherworldly beings, Daniela unknowingly awakens the demonic spirits living within the totems, unleashing their wrath before freeing Annabelle of the prison she’d been sealed in.

This teen-horror slips into Scream territory in the way that it embraces its absurdity and possible plot holes, resulting in a beautifully spooky amalgamation of the Warrens work and the Conjuring franchise’s embellishments of the couple’s accomplishments. Featuring a werewolf, a ghostly serial killer known as The Ferryman, and even a killer bride on top of the titular homicidal porcelain doll, there’s plenty to gawk at. In terms of scares, Annabelle Comes Home relies less on jump scares, though there are some and more on calculated tension building. The film expertly crafts moments of tension in scenes where a horror-viewing audience expects a jump scare or a creature moment and subverts the trope by releasing the tension with a laugh – an entire flock of scare red herrings. The most frightening moments of the film come towards the end when the entity within Annabelle manifests and when the spirits take control of Daniela – forcing Judy and Mary Ellen to fend for themselves without doing bodily harm to their friend.

Directed by contemporary horror great Gary Dauberman, Annabelle Comes Home is an exceptional representative sample of his talent and ability to give speculative genre films life beyond cheap thrills. Dauberman’s exploratory approach to the film allowed him to prescribe personalities to the film’s characters, from the humans to the animated objects locked away in the Warren’s little shed of horrors. His history as a writer provides him with a unique perspective to direction, one that resonates in the film’s structure, tone and thematic displays.

Of course, Annabelle Comes Home has a lot of creatures to feature and a lot of ground to cover – which makes it just a little too bloated with exposition, but it can be forgiven. Even when the exposition stretches on too far it’s with purpose, whether that be to entertain or to give a little more screen time to the franchise’s founding parents Ed and Lorraine. Certainly, the strongest in the franchise so far Annabelle Comes Home uses demons to highlight the grace of good humans and humor to dampen the horror. Audiences should be ready to even shed a tear, as the film subtly and beautifully showcases the compassion of Lorraine within the film before paying tribute to the real Lorraine Warren, who passed away earlier this year. Annabelle Comes Home feels like coming home, if your home is haunted by powerful spirits who can only be vanquished by the power of love and blind faith in something…better.