ANNABELLE

I’ve talked before about how much I love the TCU (The Conjuring Universe). We could definitely argue about the artistic merits of The Nun or the messy third Conjuring film, but I really rather wouldn’t. I love that they put a creepy ass doll in the original Conjuring and audiences were like “fucking yikes” and the producers were like “we’re going to make that doll a star!” and they have.

This Annabelle, the first spin off is, in this humble writer’s opinion, the weakest of the Annabelles. Annabelle: Creation is far scarier and Annabelle Comes Home is a lot more fun. But this Annabelle, this Annabelle is definitely the one most set in the 1960s.

I know these movies aren’t high art, but I love them so much. I know all the TCU films all kind of hit the same beats. There are old houses and costumes from different eras and people staring into a dark corner of a room. Then there’s that moment where you think there’s going to be a jump scare and there isn’t because the jump scare is happening a beat late. The plots are silly, but there’s something comforting about the way these movies package terror. They are ultimately films about good vs. evil. The horrors of man are simply demonic forces that just need to be put in their place by a good hearted family.

If you haven’t seen Annabelle – which is about a doll possessed by a demon – it’s important to know that Annabelle doesn’t walk around like Chucky from Child’s Play. Before I had seen Annabelle I imagined she’d be the one wandering in and out of rooms and that’s not really the case. That creepy freak kind of just sits there, and there happens to be a demon that’s tied to the doll, and that’s where the scares come in.

Where would I fit into Annabelle? I’d love to see what me in the 60s was like. What would I be wearing? What would I be doing? For the longest time in real life I tried to do a joke about Annabelle and I could never get it to work. The joke was basically that the movie creeped me out so much it made me not want to spend time in my doll room. “It just feels weird in there now!” And for some reason that didn’t invoke waves of hysteria in the masses. But what if I was a comedian in the same world as Annabelle and I was friends with Mia and John, the young couple who unluckily come into possession of that possessed doll.