Annabelle (2014)
Directed by John R. Leonetti
A couple begins to experience terrifying supernatural occurrences involving a vintage doll shortly after their home is invaded by satanic cultists.
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What critics say influenced Annabelle
Annabelle‘s Polanski homages are particularly awful in that they don’t just derive from Rosemary’s Baby, but they also reference and ape the Manson Family murders, simultaneously trying to respect Polanski while essentially shitting on the grave of his wife and unborn child.
Indeed, the story line is largely borrowed from “Rosemary’s Baby,” with nods to “The Omen,” “Witchboard,” and even “Poltergeist.”
Rosemary's Baby was released in 1968 – could Mia have been named by the filmmakers in tribute to the movie's star, Mia Farrow, who also played a maternal figure under threat?
Directed by John R. Leonetti (cinematographer of " The Conjuring " and 2011's " Insidious ") with an accomplished zing for provoking a visceral aura of tension, "Annabelle" holds a modern relevance even as its period details and deliberate yet gripping pacing remind of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
There are unsubtle nods to Rosemary’s Baby, The Changeling et al, but for the most part it’s back to the de rigueur “quiet-quiet-quiet-BOO!” formula popularised to money-spinning effect by James Wan. Director John R Leonetti served as cinematographer on several of Wan’s films (including The Conjuring) so it’s no surprise that this looks much the same – although to be fair the scares are orchestrated with more flair than usual, even if the best of them are all spoiled in the trailer.
Mia is heavily pregnant (and is the character’s name a sly homage to the star of Rosemary’s Baby?), and her husband gifts her with the large-size doll she’s apparently been coveting to complete her collection.
Directed by John R. Leonetti (cinematographer of " The Conjuring " and 2011's " Insidious ") with an accomplished zing for provoking a visceral aura of tension, "Annabelle" holds a modern relevance even as its period details and deliberate yet gripping pacing remind of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
Without revealing too much of "Annabelle" --- why spoil the film's surprises --- I can say that director John Leonetti and writer Gary Dauberman have borrowed liberally from past horror flicks like "The Ring", "The Exorcist", "Rosemary's Baby" and "Paranormal Activity".
Wan served as producer here, but director Leonetti is fresh from doing the director of photography chores on Wan’s 2013 Amityville Horror meets The Exorcist knockoff The Conjuring.
If the movie makes you want to go to church (i.e., The Exorcist), then it has done its job.
When we meet religious characters like Father Perez ( Tony Amendola ), “Annabelle” threatens to take on some " The Exorcist " or "The Omen"-like undertones, chronicling a time when some felt that Americans lost touch with their religious institutions.
“The Exorcist,” “Child’s Play” and “Rosemary’s Baby” are just a few of the films I thought about while watching “Annabelle.”
Director John R. Leonetti steers “Annabelle” in the same vein of old-school haunted house/supernatural scares that worked for “The Conjuring.”
Where James Wan's The Conjuring evoked its early-'70s period setting with a fetishistic attention to fabrics and audio-visual gadgetry, Leonetti's prequel—set a year earlier—uses the era to half-heartedly recreate the California of Joan Didion's The White Album.
The year is 1970, and John and Mia Gordon--actors Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis, respectively, resemble theme-park approximations of The Conjuring's Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga--are good Catholic suburbanites expecting their first child.
Take Rosemary’s Baby , cram in a nod to Helter Skelter , augment with the whole “haunted object” trope, and you’ve got Annabelle , the prequel/sequel to last year’s horror megahit The Conjuring .
Last year’s “The Conjuring,” a pretty good horror movie that managed to be genuinely frightening, inspired not only a sequel, due out next year, but this prequel, featuring the sinister doll Annabelle, whose ugly mug could give Chucky’s a run for its money.
It doesn't help that the doll, conceptualized as it was in "The Conjuring," starts off looking like Chucky's demented cousin painted up like a demonic tart before it's even been made a vessel of the devil (the 'real' Annabelle locked in a case in the Warrens' occult museum is a Raggedy Ann).
Remember 1945's Dead of Night or Richard Attenborough's 1978 thriller, Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins as a deranged ventriloquist?
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In the pantheon of cinematic devil dolls, Annabelle plays a game of inches, changing her position on the shelf or methodically rocking back and forth in a creaky chair, but never full-on running through the house wielding a weapon like the diminutive kewpie doll of Dan Curtis’s 1975 cult classic “Trilogy of Terror,” or Chucky of the “Child’s Play” franchise (who would sure make a swell beau for Annabelle if he weren’t already taken).
She’s no knife-wielding Chucky, from the Child’s Play series, or Richard Matheson’s great Zuni fetish doll from the 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror.
Annabelle's problems are legion but let's start with the bait-and-switch hook that promises Child's Play or the third movement of Trilogy of Terror and instead delivers a shadowy gargoyle who doesn't even have the courtesy to possess Annabelle; he just puppeteers her when the mood strikes.
That fact that the horrific-looking thing resembles Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? seems not to concern them in the slightest.
When John gives Mia an antique girl doll named Annabelle (no relation to the actress), neither of them notices its face is a mask of malevolence, like Bette Davis’ in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”
The doll, which bears more than a casual resemblance to Bette Davis’s character in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” is creepily inanimate, and Leonetti uses it to good effect.
Directed by John R. Leonetti (cinematographer of " The Conjuring " and 2011's " Insidious ") with an accomplished zing for provoking a visceral aura of tension, "Annabelle" holds a modern relevance even as its period details and deliberate yet gripping pacing remind of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
Filmmaker James Wan has graduated from “Saw” and “Insidious” and “The Conjuring” to the “Fast And Furious” franchise, leaving longtime cinematographer John Leonetti to step in – to very mixed results.
It is a prequel to last summer’s blockbuster hit “The Conjuring,” and while this installment isn’t directed by James Wan, it does follow his style he set forth in both that film and his “Insidious” movies.
It’s a shame that Leonetti doesn’t bother to carve out his own horror legacy, because everything from Insidious to The Conjuring is repurposed with only a few cheap scares in mind.
The film is directed by John R. Leonetti, a cinematographer and director who shot The Conjuring, Insidious, The Mask and I Know Who Killed Me.
Director John Leonetti, cinematographer for The Conjuring and the Insidious films, knows how to build tension.
One such director is John R. Leonetti, a long-time cinematographer whose first gig was on the killer-doll sequel “Child’s Play 3.” He was also the cameraman for “The Conjuring,” the 2013 hit directed by doll aficionado James Wan (“Saw”).
Not only is the idea that the possession has something to do with the blood of a Manson-like cult member basically warmed over from 1991’s Child’s Play 3 (which Leonetti shot), but the whole thing is predicated on the idea that someone would actually have that doll in their house in the first place.
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Wallis’ SAHM is Catherine Deneuve in “Repulsion” crossed with Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby”: a haunted beauty whose anxieties manifest themselves in the form of ghosts and ghouls.
I’ve been a sucker for creepy-doll flicks ever since that ventriloquists’ dummy from Magic put its unblinking spell on me back in 1978.