Annabelle (DVD)

Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, the best advertisement for this film is the film THE CONJURING. Where THE CONJURING plays with facts a little bit, ANNABELLE is a fictitious story. This is not to lessen the impact of the film in any way. I saw the film in the theatre and it was fun, as in "scary fun" which is a slogan used or overused by a cable channel. The basic premise is a variant on the haunted house story, except that the vehicle for the supernatural events is the well-known Annabelle doll. The script writers seem to have taken on the material that Ed and Lorraine Warren talked about in their books. I chose to watch this in the evening and with perfectly spooky timing something fell in another room and my Cat looked up in alarm, and like one of those "what not to do in a horror story" examples, I went and checked. The second time it happened, I left well enough alone. After all if it's just a "coincidence" that's fine, but if the rules of horror stories are anything to go by, you don't have to go and lookfor trouble. The special features in the Blu-ray version are totally marvelous; the one aspect I think fans of supernatural horror are going to love is the anecdotes that talk about eerie events on set.Deleted scenes made me think that a directors cut could've been made, since there was some material that led in a different direction. Whilst thefilm as it is works extremely well, it is evident that with James Wan as producer, the style of film we're going to get is pretty much already set: in the making of feature Wan talks about what you don't see, things out of view, things in the corner of your view, the sort of things that he delivered so perfectly in THE CONJURING and in INSIDIOUS, so when you are on a good thing, why shift to another style. I would've liked to have seen a director and producer commentary for the film but I guess you can't have everything. Maybe James Wan will do a detailed commentary for INSIDIOUS THREE. The style of the fil is already set, which is not bad, just that if you see the deleted scenes, you can see where the director may have taken it if given free reign. Its not bad that the edit was changed to a James Wan style, but it really is something that shows more of James Wan as director, rather than the name on the film who was hired as director. In that respect, I would have liked to have seen what the director might have done if left to his own devices. Nonetheless, if you havwe the suspension of disbelief, this film works well, and I enjoyed it immensely, and the behind the scenes spooky events is actually quite fun. A very professional result, I just wish that James Wan had not said that he is leaving Horror as a director, since this is very much a James Wan film.

Good movie

I am a big movie person and this series was amazing.

Scary if you turn off your mind.

Watch it about 3 times with my 7 yr old great niece. We love it.

Annabelle is a stellar spin off of The Conjuring. I saw it on it's last week in the theater at 11:00pm and was the only one in the theater and it terrified me. I can't for the life of me understand all the negative reviews. I'm a massive horror movie buff and have seen hundreds and hundreds of horror films with the 70s and 80s being my favorite decades for the genre and Annabelle ranks with the best of the best with the scariest classics. It's very well made with great performances (the husband gets a little annoying though but nothing really distracting) and has some terrifically effective scares and a wonderful tone of constant dread. I actually enjoyed Annabelle even more than The Conjuring. My only real complaint is I wish the movie had the courage to follow through with what they seemed to originally be going for with one of the main characters at the end but other than that Annabelle is a rock solid scare fest. I highly recommend watching it right before The Conjuring for a great double feature. Really adds even more to The Conjuring. I hope the sequel is just as great or even greater. I'm wondering about the different director though from Lights Out. Lights Out was good but it didn't quite meet my expectations. Hopefully that will change with repeat viewings though.

My kids just bought all the movies at once because they wanted to see them one after the other during a three day weekend. Nothing to ride home about, but it was a good passing of time.

It's the season for scary movies and how can you go wrong with an evil doll? This movie was a hit and I would definitely recommend!