Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
Directed by Gary Dauberman
Determined to keep Annabelle from wreaking more havoc, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren bring the possessed doll to the locked artifacts room in their home, placing her “safely” behind sacred glass and enlisting a priest’s holy blessing. But an unholy night of horror awaits as Annabelle awakens the evil spirits in the room, who all set their sights on a new target—the Warrens' ten-year-old daughter, Judy, and her friends.
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Horror writer Gary Dauberman (“It”), making his directorial debut, goes for a campy ’70s vibe as the Warrens’ daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) and her two baby sitters (Madison Iseman and Katie Sarife) unwittingly unleash Annabelle in the Warrens’ roomful of haunted objects.
It’s not unlike the recent “It” iteration (which Dauberman wrote the final draft of and has a sole writing credit on the upcoming “It: Chapter 2”), where the stellar “Stand By Me” dynamic between the young protagonists are interrupted roughly every ten minutes by a mediocre horror film.
Despite the ridiculous approach to Annabelle Comes Home that sees out of place creatures such as werewolves terrorizing the protagonists (it goes against the reality-grounded nature of the horror) that essentially functions as some kind of shameless ploy to sit back and wait what character becomes the next fan favorite or garners memes, so Warner Bros. can give the go-ahead for that character’s own origin story, writer and director Gary Dauberman (he has had a hand in writing all of the Annabelle movies including the widely successful adaptation of It, also making his directorial debut here) at least focuses on making us care about the characters, even though the fake-out deaths become quite annoying.
This third official Annabelle movie, from writer Gary Dauberman ( It, previous Annabelle movies ) , making his directorial debut, takes us into the early 1970s and trots out a tale as old as time in horror films: The Teenage Babysitter in the Haunted House.
Screenwriter Gary Dauberman, who contributed to “Annabelle” and “The Nun” in the series, as well as the recent Stephen King adaptation “It,” makes his directing debut, and it’s surefooted.
Yet Dauberman has also contributed to Annabelle: Creation (2017), a much-improved prequel, and the Stephen King adaptation It (2017), which was a huge hit .
When we did the set visit last year, it was mentioned that the intent for this latest sequel was to create a horror-fied version of Night at the Museum , and Dauberman achieves just that, making Annabelle Comes Home the most fun I’ve had with a genre film this year so far.
The ones that stick around enough time to seep into the culture and reach a seventh installment tend to look a little different than the paradigm-shifters that first turned them into must-sees, and indeed Annabelle Comes Home ’s story structure better resembles Night at the Museum or the original Jumanji than it does The Conjuring .
![[REC] poster](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/hgyJR4sgMsee6xMFM3xYiG6cDCh.jpg)
Of course, any edifice can probably be made menacing with the right angles and proper lighting — for instance, the 2007 Spanish gem [REC] managed to turn a Barcelona apartment building into Hell on Earth — but director Gary Dauberman and cinematographer Michael Burgess find more menace in the early-‘70s décor than they do in any of the horrific happenings.
He seems to be trying to take notes from director James Wan, who before taking off to sea for “Aquaman,” directed the visceral and impressive “The Conjuring” and “The Conjuring 2” and helped craft the plot for this movie.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles from The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 as Ed and Lorraine Warren, a pair of paranormal investigators and authors associated with prominent cases of haunting, but really their characters bookend this film.
Whatever the reason for Annabelle’s unleashing, it results in a sturdy, stylish, meat-and-potatoes haunted-house movie better than anything in the series other than The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2. First-time director Gary Dauberman, who wrote this screenplay and those for Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation, and The Nun, must have learned a few tricks along the way, as this is a confident, well-directed debut that makes good use of the camera.
Indeed, this is a return to form for The Conjuring Universe; at its best, it approaches the jittery heights of 2013's " The Conjuring " and 2016's " The Conjuring 2 " while fitting snugly within series lore.
Annabelle Comes Home es una divertida cinta de horror familiar que no logra, sin embargo, sacudirse los peores topiezos del universo de The Conjuring.
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“Annabelle Comes Home” plays very similarly to 2015’s “Goosebumps“; there’s a motley crew of previously contained monsters on the loose and it’s up to a ragtag group of youngsters to get them back in their cages.