How did the creepy doll from “The Conjuring” get to be malevolent in the first place? I was hoping for a Krusty the Clown doll-style good/evil switch, but no. In the prequel “Annabelle,” we learn that, many years ago, the doll became possessed after witnessing unspeakable things including cult murders, a woman committing suicide by slashing her own throat and 1970s wallpaper.
In 1970s California, Mia (an affecting Annabelle Wallis) is an expectant young wife whose med-student husband (Ward Horton) buys her a doll that, to her, looks like a precious Victorian collector’s item but would make you and me want to get the number of the nearest exorcist on speed dial. Then the doll observes a series of gruesome events that make the Manson Family look restrained, and even gets the blood of a dead murderess in her eye. Welcome to an infernal Visine commercial: It gets the red in.
For exposition, there’s a handy Satanically literate priest who tells us that the demon that possesses the doll wants a human soul. But such is hell’s etiquette handbook that it only counts if you voluntarily offer up your soul, even if under duress. More background comes from Aisle Four of the local spooky book shop, whose proprietor (Alfre Woodard) happily sets aside her own needs to become Mia’s sidekick and confidante.
“Annabelle” is mostly a grab into the Great Big Bag O’ Horror Clichés: sound-bombs of shrieking violins explode randomly, doors slam unbidden, rocking chairs creak by themselves, machines suddenly whir to life. There’s no particular reason why the forces of hell should be quite so roundabout in their goals. It’s almost like Lucifer is drawing things out to the length of a movie.
While the film isn’t clever or original, it is reasonably scary, especially when it knocks off the preliminaries and gets to the good stuff. There are just too few horror movies that deliver a nice hair-raising glimpse of the devil, or at least one of his leading emissaries. Too bad the ending is so tidy and easy. After so much chaos, things wrap up with the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie: not evil enough.