Eagerly anticipating this week ... (5-24)

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (5-24)
Alex Garland's Civil War (2024)

8/30/2017

Annabelle: Creation (2017) - Sandberg's orphanage doll prequel is slow but rewarding



The titular doll looks unusually frightening on this poster for David F. Sandberg's Annabelle: Creation

When doll-maker Mullins and his wife lose their young daughter in a tragic accident in 1943, they withdraw and unknowingly come to invite an evil into their home. More than a decade later, they invite new life into their lives, thinking that they are safe to do so.

Annabelle: Creation is the 4th film in the Conjuring franchise, the sequel and prequel to John R. Leonetti's Annabelle (2014). It is written by Gary Dauberman (Annabelle) and directed by David F. Sandberg (Lights Out (2016)).
Annabelle: Creation takes its sweet time coming around to the scares it holds with plenty of scenes of thumps, shadows and so on, and, coupled with the cast, which mostly consists of young girls, it may impress hard-boiled horror-fans as a bit of a 'kiddie horror'. It is not the all-out horror attack known from James Wan's The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016) but a softer package. The recently passed on master filmmaker Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)) is palpable as inspiration here; especially his The Funhouse (1981) and Poltergeist (1982). The film also calls to mind a more recent, great horror film, Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone/El Espinazo del Diablo (2001).
Dauberman and Sandberg make a virtue out of following the conventions of the genre and those set up by the previous entries in the franchise. It is hard to come up with new tricks while also following a set path and inhabiting a well-defined universe.
But they manage well with a classic haunted house story; just expect some classic clichés also; the car that won't start and the adult authority figures that won't simply move away from the belligerent house with their tormented children, to name a couple. Christianity and the church are the only way to beat the evil into submission, once again, - SPOILER but even a priest can be mistaken, we see here, as the film neatly ties itself up to the very beginning of Annabelle.
The cast do uniformly fine here; no-one distinguishes themselves enough to be highlighted, and the girls feel less genuinely innocent and of-the-period than one might have hoped.
Don't expect the Annabelle origin story to be overly detailed; SPOILER the film still doesn't actually tell us anything about what the demonic presence that inhabits the doll is, and towards the ending, it seems there is more than one demon roaming the premises. - But, most importantly, the a bit long and slow-winding Annabelle: Creation does churn out some effective scares, SPOILER and demons shown shortly, which the horror-fan will inevitably want to stare at for longer than the film lets us. But this is probably as it should be.
Annabelle: Creation matches the quality of Annabelle and makes for a decent warm-up until the hugely anticipated It, which the world by now is just about gasping to finally get to see in a few weeks.

Related posts:
 

Conjuring franchise: The Conjuring 2 (2016) - Wan's sequel is a long horror treat with terrifying periods
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Annabelle (2014) - Leonetti's creepy if derivative Conjuring spin-off 

The Conjuring (2013) - Best horror film in 7 years (cinematographer)

David F. SandbergLights Out (2016) - Sandberg debuts with effective spook story





Watch a teaser trailer for the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 217.6 mil. $ and counting
= Mega-hit
[Annabelle: Creation premiered 19 June (Los Angeles Film Festival) and runs 109 minutes. Shooting took place in California from June - August 2016. As with Conjuring 2, a priest blessed the set before shooting began. The film opened #1 to a 35 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it has spent its following two weeks at #2 and to date grossed 79 mil. $. The film is likely to still gross quite a bit and may reach or even top the 256.9 mil. $ gross of Annabelle. It has pushed the franchise past the 1 bil. $ mark as only the third horror franchise so far, following the Alien and Resident Evil franchises. It has yet to open in a few markets: Argentina tomorrow, in Greece in mid-September and in major markets Spain and Japan on 12 and 13 October, respectively. The film's success, like almost all horror films, is not thanks to China, which don't award such films a license to release in the country. Next in the Conjuring franchise is The Nun (2018), a second spin-off, this of the nun seen in Conjuring 2. Annabelle: Creation is fresh at 68 % with a 6.1/19 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Annabelle: Creation?

8/27/2017

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

The Top 10 of 2009:



1. I Killed My Mother/J'ai Tué Ma Mère - Xavier Dolan



2. Avatar - James Cameron



3. Coraline - Henry Selick



4. City Island - Raymond De Felitta



5. The Cove, documentary - Louie Psihoyos



6. I Love You, Phillip Morris - Glenn Ficarra, John Requa



7. A Serious Man - Ethan Coen, Joel Coen



8. Drag Me to Hell - Sam Raimi 


9. The Informant! - Steven Soderbergh



10. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Män Som Hatar Kvinnor - Niels Arden Oplev

Other great movies of 2009 (in alphabetic order):



(500) Days of Summer - Marc Webb



Adventureland - Greg Mottola



An Education - Lone Scherfig



Broken Embraces/Los Abrazos Rotos - Pedro Almodóvar



Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Phil Lord, Christopher Miller



Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold



The Good Heart - Dagur Kári



The Hangover - Todd Phillips



In the Electric Mist - Bertrand Tavernier



It's Complicated - Nancy Meyers

Good, recommendable movies of 2009 (in alphabetic order):



17 Again - Burr Steers



A Single Man - Tom Ford



Antichrist - Lars Von Trier



Applause - Martin Zandvliet



Away We Go - Sam Mendes



The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans/Bad Lieutenant - Werner Herzog



The Blind Side - John Lee Hancock



Brotherhood/Broderskab - Nicolo Donato



Camping - Jacob Bitsch



Change of Plans/Le Code a Changé - Danièle Thompson



Cold Souls - Sophie Barthes



Crazy Heart - Scott Cooper



Dead Snow/Død Snø - Tommy Wirkola



Dogtooth/Κυνόδοντας (Kynodontas) - Yorgos Lanthimos



Funny People - Judd Apatow



The Haunting in Connecticut - Peter Cornwell



The House of the Devil - Ti West



Hung - season 1 - Colette Burson, Dmitry Lipkin



In the Loop - Armando Iannucci



Inglorious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino

(Untitled) - Jonathan Parker

The Worst of 2009:


1. The Fourth Kind - Olatunde Osunsanmi


2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - David Yates 



3. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - Stephen Sommers



4. Fast & Furious - Justin Lin



5. Mr. Nobody - Jaco Van Dormael



6. District 9 - Neill Blomkamp



7. The Box - Richard Kelly



8. Get Low - Aaron Schneider



9. Harry Brown - Daniel Barber

Other less than good movies of the year (in alphabetic order):

Black Dynamite - Scott Sanders 
Confessions of a Shopaholic - P.J. Hogan
Enter the Void - Gaspar Noé
Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) - Tom Six
 
[56 titles in total]

Notes:

The first tentative summary of the year 2009 in films and TV-series has already 5 masterpieces on the top 10: Canadian prodigy Xavier Dolan's amazing indie youth debut I Killed My Mother, James Cameron's worldwide sci-fi adventure smash Avatar, Henry Selick's fantastically realized dark family adventure stop-motion animation Coraline, Raymond De Felitta's terrifically constructed Long Island-set dramedy City Island and finally Louie Psihoyos' shocking and devastating dolphin slaughter documentary The Cove.
The top 10 also includes great films from Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (incredible true-story romcom I Love You, Phillip Morris), Ethan and Joel Coen (poignant and hilarious serio-comedy A Serious Man), Sam Raimi (superior and zany horror-comedy entertainer Drag Me to Hell), Steven Soderbergh (Matt Damon-vehicle true-crime laugh riot The Informant!) and finally Niels Arden Oplev (trilogy-starting Scandinavian noir thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)
Truly delightful and great are also films of the year by Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), Lone Scherfig (An Education), Pedro Almodóvar (Broken Embraces), Greg Mottola (Adventureland), Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) and others. The year offered shocking European movies (Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth, and, though to a lesser degree shocking, Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow) and some American genre pleasures (Burr Steers' 17 Again, Ti West's The House of the Devil and Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds).
In the other end of the spectrum, Wes Anderson made his career's most negligible film to date with Fantastic Mr. Fox. But it isn't bad per se, and can therefore not mingle with the worst of 2009:
Olatunde Osunsanmi's mockumentary sci-fi-horror The Fourth Kind is without question the worst of the year seen so far, and far 'ahead' of the 8 other films on the Worst of 2009 list. It is followed by some big-buck tentpoles that lack originality, logic, humor or just a narrative worth a couple of hours time: David Yates' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Stephen Sommers' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Justin Lin's Fast & Furious are all dismal experiences; big, loud and altogether forgettable. They are followed by a smaller, pretentious, overlong art film, Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody with Jared Leto, Neill Blomkamp's hugely overrated, unpleasant District 9, Richard Kelly's second post masterpiece Donnie Darko (2001) disappointment, Twilight Zone-inspired The Box and two films with respected veteran star actors, Aaron Schneider's Get Low with Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek and Daniel Barber's Harry Brown with Michael Caine, which fail for different reasons.
The lists will increase in films and TV-series (only Hung season 1 is reviewed from 2009 so far) in the following months with the next, larger, updated version coming in December 2017. So keep checking in at Film Excess and leave your opinions about the list and 2009's best and worst in a comment. Thank you

2009 titles still on the watchlist:

The Loved Ones, Undertow, The String, About Elly, From Beginning to End, Giallo, Motherhood, The Descent: Part 2, The Maid, Eastbound & Down - season 1, Tetro, Pandorum, Agora

Previous annual lists:
  

2016 in films - according to Film Excess
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
 

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2014 in films - according to Film Excess

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2013 in films - according to Film Excess
 
 

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  


What do you think of the 2009 lists?
Which 2009 films are your favorites and the worst of the year in your opinion?

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (4-24)

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (4-24)
Niclas Bendixen's Rom (2024)