'Annabelle' (Blu ray + DVD + Digital HD)
(Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Tony Amendola, Alfre Woodard, Kerry O'Malley, et al / Blu ray + DVD / R / 2015 / Warner Bros.)
Overview: A couple begins to experience terrifying supernatural occurrences involving a vintage doll shortly after their home is invaded by satanic cultists.
Blu ray Verdict: I just got finished watching 'Annabelle', the prequel to 'The Conjuring.' My only fault with this movie was that there didn't seem to be an actual plot; it felt like a lot of scary stuff was just happening. However, I found the overall movie to be very scary and I thought it did a great job of building suspense through sound, imagery and lighting.
Not knowing much about the movie before I saw it (aside from the fact that it was about a doll), I didn't know what to expect from this film. I thought that it might be slightly reminiscent of Chuckie, where a doll goes around terrorizing people, but Annabelle is much more than that.
The first 30 minutes of the movie nothing scary really happens. We just get introduced to the characters and learn how the doll gets possessed. The main characters Mia and John live in Santa Monica and are expecting their first child, but after they are attacked in their home, they relocate to an apartment in Pasadena after John gets offered a new job.
It is after they start living in their new apartment that the paranormal occurrences start to occur. What I liked most about Annabelle was that it used a lot of different 'monsters' and 'scares' throughout the film as opposed to it solely relying on the menacing looking doll.
There are a few occurrences of invisible things pulling Mia. Doors repeatedly open and close on their own. Electronics start turning on by themselves. We see a dead woman walking around haunting Mia. And perhaps the scariest monster was the Demon/Devil that we see repeatedly midway through the film. An interesting thing to note is that although the movie is titled Annabelle, we never actually see the doll 'move' and that these paranormal occurrences seem to only effect Mia, her husband John never experiences anything.
I also liked how the film used lighting, sound and imagery to scare the audience. Annabelle is filled with a lot of long, dark corridors. Lights flicker on and off. There are a lot of footsteps and thuds. And of course the classic which is loud fast paced music, followed by silence, then a screamer. I also really liked how the monsters actually looked scary and not just silly (like the monster from 'Insidious').
Overall I really enjoyed this movie. It made me and my boyfriend jump several times, so I found it to be pretty scary. The actor that plays John (Ward Horton), I found his acting to be pretty mediocre to terrible, but that didn't ruin the movie for me. Also, the ending is not the best but, I would watch this movie again. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.77:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:
The Curse of Annabelle
Bloody Tears of Possession
Dolls of The Demon
A Demonic Process
Deleted Scenes