The Quarantine Stream: ‘Annabelle Comes Home’ Is A Halloween Haunted House In Movie Form
By Chris Evangelista/Oct. 5, 2020 10:00 am EST
While the main Conjuring films have been strong, the spin-offs have been hit or miss, and mostly miss. The Annabelle series got off on the wrong foot with the first Annabelle film, which was kind of awful. The ship righted itself with Annabelle: Creation, and then got even better with Annabelle Comes Home. The plot is rather simple: all the scary stuff that the Warrens keep locked in their cursed room wakes up and starts scaring the hell out of the Warrens’ daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace), her babysitter (Madison Iseman) and her babysitter’s bestie (Katie Sarife).
But writer-director Gary Dauberman is able to have a lot of fun with this straightforward premise, introducing one memorable specter after another: there’s a killer wedding dress; a haunted board game; a haunted TV; a haunted set of samurai armor; a ghost called the Ferryman who is also a serial killer; hell, there’s even a werewolf (the werewolf is also a ghost). While this onslaught of ghouls often feels like a bald-faced attempt at launching even more spin-offs (I’d happily watch a Ferryman movie, by the way), it’s also a lot of fun.
And as a fun bonus, main Conjuring stars Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson show up as well for extended cameos. Farmiga and Wilson are pros at this, and the chemistry they have together works wonders. While the real Lorraine and Ed Warren were, to be blunt, full of shit, their movie counterparts are warm, caring people with a strong relationship. That relationship goes a long way towards elevating this material, and there’s also something sweet about Annabelle Comes Home’s subplot involving Judy’s loneliness. She’s an outcast, both because her parents have recently been outed as ghost hunters and because she seems to possess the same psychic powers as her mother. Judy starts the film feeling like a freak but comes out the other side with a renewed sense of purpose.
