Dir. David F. Sandberg (2017)
A prequel to Annabelle, a bunch of nuns and orphans go to a farmhouse where the malevolent spirit of a deceased child/demon causes a bunch of drama.
CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
The redheaded stepchild of the Conjuring Universe (CU), the creators of the rest of the films got together and said “Hey, what if we make The Conjuring but boring?” This is a tough one to even sit through, because there’s not one actually scary thing that happens until almost forty minutes into the movie and it feels like this was designed to be a completely different movie but they jammed it into the Annabelle series to capitalize on the success of the movies in the CU.
Literally me while I was watching this movie.
Basically, this nice couple who own a farmhouse had their daughter die in a tragic accident, so they began to essentially make their house an orphanage run by nuns after the mother falls ill. The house seems to be haunted by a mysterious presence who starts to fuck things up for the orphans, and it turns out that the family knows the presence is there and evil before they ever invite the orphans into their home. The mother is “ill” because the demon slashed her across the face and started throwing things around the house, which of course made the farmer and his wife think, hey, let’s invite a bunch of fucking children into our demon-possessed house.
The movie makes not a lick of sense and has absolutely zero style or substance, but it does have a pretty good performance from a few of the child actors, including Lulu Wilson who is (rightfully) better known for Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House and Oujia: Origin of Evil. One of the orphans gets possessed and ends up escaping the shitstorm at the end, leading to the only good scene in the entire movie when she becomes the cult member girl who kills her parents in Annabelle.
Yeah, there were a couple of the standard jump scares and some creaky-boned demon stuff as per normal, but there were none of the scenes that induced anxiety like in the other films of the CU, nor were there any really horrifying sights like in the others. Thankfully, Comes Home was a decent film and we can just pretend Creation didn’t happen at all.
The only scary thing in this movie, and it exists in literally all the other ones too.
Who this movie is for: Hardcore CU fans, People who like boring origin stories, People who hate absolutely all sources of fun
Bottom Line: God this movie sucks, and it’s boring as shit. Don’t add this one to your rewatch of the Conjuring series, and if you haven’t seen it, watch literally the last five minutes of the movie after you watch Annabelle. This one not only could be missing from the entire series, but the series would be better off had it never been made. Lulu Wilson is great, everyone else is a big miss.
