Review of Annabelle: Creation (2017) by Dirigiblepulp — 12 Jan 2019

Definitely disappointed with this. All the elements are present, but they never add up to anything. The plot never coheres, the effective scares, tension and atmosphere all feel like disparate elements instead of a complete whole.

This is simultaneously a supernatural haunting, demonic possession and a killer doll movie without any of the pleasing genre mishmash you hope would occur. The film seems driven by whatever a particular scene needs to happen to be "scary" without actually earning it.

You want to embrace nightmare logic while watching this, but ultimately this goes exactly where you would expect, playing with expectations only within a scene, at random, without rules, not in an anything goes madness kind of way, but in an arbitrary lackadaisical one.

It's borrowed parts, borrowed well, welded together at random.