Mia subsequently finds her sanity and her marriage tried by the supernatural goings-on that plague her even after they move to a new apartment. Mia seeks assistance from two people: her parish priest Father Perez (Tony Amendola) and Evelyn (Alfre Woodard), a local bookshop owner with a tragic past. The demon tied to Annabelle wants the soul of Mia's baby and it won't give up without a sacrifice.
For the most part, director John R. Leonetti's Annabelle works as a nod to '60s and '70s-style supernatural thrillers, embracing producer James Wan's old school, less-is-more approach from The Conjuring. Creepy sound effects, a gust of wind, a dark hall, a creaking door are all tried-and-true, but still effective methods for creating tension and chills. Annabelle itself doesn't need to do anything except sit there on a shelf or a chair to creep you out thanks to its face.
That's why it's so disappointing when the movie eventually succumbs to the use of CG demon effects in its homestretch. Such effects actually pulls one out of the movie rather than make it scarier because it doesn't quite mesh with the execution of the rest of the movie. Sometimes wondering what's lurking in that dark room with the character is far scarier than actually seeing it.
Annabelle is set in 1971 against the backdrop of the Manson family murder trials. The protagonists go from living in a world where you could leave your door unlocked to one of living in fear of cult members committing gruesome murders. Those who either don't believe in or aren't scared by the supernatural may find this real world horror, the evil that men do, far more effective than the supernatural.
The story's era ends up impacting the movie in a way the filmmakers seem grossly oblivious to: race. I have to dance around this for fear of spoilers, but the development and arc of Woodard's character will almost certainly rankle some viewers. She's a working class/lower middle class African-American woman in 1971, just a few years after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination and race riots in the streets of America, yet Evelyn has nothing more important to worry about in life than the well-being of this wealthy, young white couple? This issue also leads to the film's ending, which was troubling for reasons again that can't be explored due to spoilers.Perhaps best known to stateside viewers for her role on The Tudors, Annabelle Wallis does a solid job carrying the movie despite the relative blandness of her character. Maybe that's because whatever wooden qualities she possesses pale next to Ward Horton's utterly white bread husband character. Seriously, John makes a stick in the mud seem exciting.