Annabelle Comes Home

photo courtesy of ew.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Annabelle Comes Home is the latest entry in the Conjuring Universe and the third movie in the Annabelle series, which centers around a haunted, malevolent doll. In this installment, we return to the home of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson), the demonologists who star in the main Conjuring movies. The Warrens leave their daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) safely in the hands of their babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) overnight. But when Mary Ellen’s friend Daniella (Katie Sarife) goes snooping around the Warren’s artifact room, the house becomes anything but safe.

     For Annabelle Comes Home, the filmmakers keep things simple. The premise is modest—Annabelle gets out and must be returned to her protective case—and there’s basically one main location, the Warren’s home. The last Conjuring movie I saw, The Nun (2018), had far too much nonsense and too few real scares, as empty as the cavernous abbey in which it took place. Annabelle Comes Home feels like something of a course-correction, limiting the scale and scope of the action to focus on what the franchise does best.

photo courtesy of alicespringscinema.com

     Look, I don’t think anyone is going to confuse Annabelle Comes Home with high art. The story plays like an afterthought, with just the bare minimum character work. And no scare in Annabelle Comes Home seems particularly original; the Conjuring universe continues to rely on the same bread and butter tricks that made the franchise’s name in the first Conjuring. It’s certainly not going to stick with you long after leaving the theater.

     Even so, I found Annabelle Comes Home surprisingly fun. Its scares, while not exactly new, still work well, partly because Comes Home wisely spends more time building tension and suspense than some of the previous Conjuring flicks. There are less jump scares per minute of screen time, which, frankly, makes the movie scarier overall. Also working in the movie’s favor is a new ingredient to the Conjuring franchise: a comedy subplot, centered around Mary Ellen’s wannabe boyfriend Bob (Michael Cimino).

photo courtesy of bloodydisgusting.com

     Crucially, the movie lets Annabelle share the screen with some other baddies. I have gone on record making fun of Annabelle’s prior appearances because, ultimately, all she does is sit places and look creepy. Comes Home makes the most out of that tried and true formula, but it also spices things up with a new roster of genuinely creepy monsters. They’re the movie’s most original feature, and they keep the action feeling fresh and frightening. We should be hearing about their spinoffs any day now.

Annabelle Comes Home is rated R for horror violence and terror.

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