Annabelle: Creation
A group of orphans, and a nun, go to live in the large house of Samuel and Esther Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto), a toymaker and his wife who lost their only daughter in a car accident. Once there, one girl in particular (Lulu Wilson) finds herself drawn to a creepy porcelain doll that may have evil intentions…
The Swedish director, perhaps bolstered by a bigger budget and more confidence from those around him, has stepped things up for Annabelle Creation, mainly by slowing things down at first. Sandberg goes to some pains to set up the geography of the house and grounds in which Linda (Wilson), our young crippled orphan heroine, will find herself fighting for her life from the unwanted attentions of the demonic doll. There’s a certain knowing joy to be derived from his tour of the grounds — if you think that rickety stairlift, that unusually large dollhouse, or that sinister well might play a part later, you might be right about that.
It’s about twenty minutes before there’s anything remotely resembling a bump in the night, but once there is, the pace rarely lets up, partially to ride roughshod over plot holes you could drive a monster truck through. And with so many characters to menace, the last thirty minutes become more frenetic than terrifying, more hackneyed than horrifying. Sandberg and screenwriter Gary Dauberman, who also wrote Annabelle and The Nun, could easily have lost a couple of the fairly large group of orphans, perhaps in favour of focusing on the ever-compelling LaPaglia and Otto as the bereaved parents who seem to be turning a blind eye to the evil goings on under their roof. But there’s a nicely-sustained sense of menace throughout, some of the jump scares are effective as hell, and it all ties into the rest of the franchise — sorry, universe — rather neatly. You might even say it’s child’s play.
