Annabelle: Creation

Annabelle: Creation

Sequels to bad horror movies used to be an even more worthless rule of moviedom than the original. You can’t build on nothing. Last year’s “Ouija: Origin of Evil” was much better than the dull original, and 2017 does that surprising trick again with “Annabelle: Creation,” a huge improvement over 2014’s monstrously awful “Annabelle.”

David F. Sandberg’s follow-up doesn’t feel focus-grouped to death or spawned strictly for profit margins, while that film felt like a quickie way to cash-in on the success of “The Conjuring.” It has echoes of the original film, and works more with mood and less with cheap scares than either “The Conjuring 2” or “Annabelle,” resulting in a truly effective genre flick. It’s not perfect, but it is damn closer than anyone would have predicted.

While this title makes clear that it is an origin story for one of the creepiest dolls in film history, it also sets up its own characters and universe in which to play, one that echoes James Wan’s original film more than any of the ones since then have. Just as that box office hit centered on a group of sisters caught in a nightmare, “Annabelle: Creation” is another haunted house flick with a group of young girls confronted by things that go bump in the night.

In this case, it’s a group of orphans who get to live in a big isolated home after their orphanage closes. The girls vary in age once again echoing the sisters from the original film but Janice (Taliha Bateman), weakened by polio, quickly becomes our protagonist, along with her sweet best friend Linda (Lulu Wilson). Evil always preys on the weak and kind first.

And so Janice realizes something isn’t right in the Mullins’ house first. Yes, Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia) seems like a nice enough guy, but he doesn’t want anyone going in his deceased daughter Bee’s room. And Esther Mullins (Miranda Otto) is even more mysterious, injured, bed-ridden and ringing a bell whenever she needs her husband.

The girls mostly keep to themselves, but at night Janice sees that Bee’s locked room is open and then she finds that damned doll. Souls are fought over, lights go out and religious imagery gets subverted left and right from there. These movies have many themes, but one of its biggest is the complete failure of religion to protect us from true evil. Sandberg loves to cast light through crosses on windows and gets some incredible mileage in the final act with imagery that recalls the crucifixion.

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but “Annabelle: Creation” has what the first film lacked so clearly: a strong visual language. Sandberg and his team do a terrific job of ratcheting up tension through old-fashioned horror movie means like keeping us with our terrified little girls. As their eyes widen and the hair on their neck rises regarding what is making that creaking sound down the dark hallway, so does ours.

Sandberg knows fear is most powerful from the unknown and he has fun with sound and light in “Creation.” Creaking chairs, footsteps when everyone should be asleep, that damn bell Mrs. Mullins rings they’re all used expertly by him in the first half of the film.

We know all these tricks, of course. And Sandberg knows we know them. Rarely have I seen a mainstream horror movie that plays more cheerfully with the awareness of the contemporary horror audience than this one does. He knows if he shows you an open door into a darkened room, your gaze is fixed on that darkness, scanning the edges of the frame for movement, glowing eyes, whatever. If he puts Annabelle in the background, nobody’s looking at the foreground.

He really enjoys these setups during the early parts of “Annabelle: Creation.” Then Sandberg and his team unleash hell during the last half-hour of this film, building some of the best mainstream horror sequences of recent years including one in a barn that had me thinking “no,” to myself about seven times next to a poor large man who just kept whispering “no.” That’s when you know a movie is working. When it reduces grown men to single-syllable utterances.

“Annabelle: Creation” isn’t perfect it’s too long (109 minutes) and sometimes feels like it’s making up story logic as it goes along but in another sense it has no interest in being perfect. In that regard, it’s more like a ghost story told around a campfire than a literal origin story a mix of religious imagery, grieving parents, weakened children and otherworldly evil and that urban legend aspect could have allowed Sandberg and writer Gary Dauberman to go further into the insanity of their concept.

The barn sequence is a great example of when the movie knows to go nuts, but the film often feels like it’s pulling back from true risk-taking. It sometimes seems too restrained, believe it or not given it’s about a possessed doll, and one too many of the scariest scenes end ineffectively with jump scares that don’t pay off like the great build ups. But again what could be making that creaking sound in the hallway is scarier than whatever heavily made up demon is actually there. “Annabelle: Creation” understands that fear for most of its running time. And now this totally unexpected trend is part of what’s tearing down one of this critic’s biggest fears the horror movie sequel.

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