Annabelle Comes Home (2019) (film)

 Reviewed by Ron Elly, Sabah State Library HQ

Annabelle Comes Home is the latest installment within The Conjuring franchise, as another sequel within the Annabelle series. Annabelle (2014) and Annabelle: Creation (2017). The Conjuring has two movies to its name and a spin-off prequel to The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Nun (2018). Adding to the franchise, The Conjuring 3 is apparently in production and has a release date in 2020 which I very much look forward to.

The plot goes like this. Mary’s friend, Daniella, played by Katie Sarife, comes over to the house uninvited and because of her, the possessed doll Annabelle is freed from the holy glass box that contains its evil spirit and it is being contagiously active in awakening the other evil spirits and supernatural beings in the Warren’s Occult Museum, a room in the house where Ed and Lorraine locked all the haunted artifacts while the supernatural masters, The Warren couple, is away. The three girls must somehow survive the night without any past experience in dealing with harmful spirits and demons. 

Despite the cliched haunted house touch, the film sets up the characters and things for this one quite well. The performances are faultless. I personally think Mckenna Grace is fantastic as the Warren’s little girl. Consider me a fan of her artistic acting.

It is nowhere as spooky and terrifying as the main Conjuring movies but it is still a mildly scary and fun ride. It’s a very cheeky kind of horror and it features more than a couple of different supernatural beings. There’s a lot of teasing involved. The ghosts does a lot of hide-and-seek and… Tadaa! You get that typical jumpscares nowadays. You can see a lot of walking around in the background too of course.

Overall, Annabelle Comes Home may not be as good as its predecessors Annabelle (2014) and Annabelle: Creation (2017) (this one was legit scary!) but it’s still an enjoyable horror bonus especially if you’re familiar with the characters and supernatural beings of the franchise. Again, it's not terrifyingly scary and it certainly could've been better, like a lot of people out there are saying too but oh well, I had fun.