Samuel Mullins is the guy to watch in "Annabelle: Creation." He's Anthony LaPaglia, Golden Globe winner and star of "Lantana." (Do you remember that little gem? With Barbara Hershey? The great gift of horror films is that they give you interesting actors in meaty roles: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Keri Russell, Ethan Hawke. These actors get to do fascinating stuff in horror films--stuff that they might not get to do in prestige pics, because they are not Jennifer Lawrence or Meryl Streep. I think this is the Best-Kept Secret of wide-release horror films. Go for the acting. Seriously? National Treasure Lili Taylor contending with a demon who wants to rip apart her family? Who wouldn't pay fifteen bucks to see that? And do you really think--say--Darren Aronofsky is going to give Lili Taylor the chance to show off her chops in this way? No. You have to go with James Wan, who--almost alone among filmmakers--understands what Lili Taylor has to offer us. Thank you, James Wan, for that.)
Mullins's wife has a name, but let's just focus on the fact that she's in the person of actress Miranda Otto--from "Lord of the Rings," "What Lies Beneath," and "The Thin Red Line." Miranda Otto and Anthony LaPaglia as an embattled married couple--and I'm sold! You're not going to see THAT in "Dunkirk"!
Also, three cheers for "Annabelle: Creation," for trampling all over the Bechdel Test, without even making a big deal of it. Again and again, we see women speaking to one another--and are they speaking about a boy crush? No! The only dude is Anthony LaPaglia, and *no one* is getting sweaty over him! These girls are fretting together about how to defeat their nemesis--who, you guessed it, is an evil wooden *female* doll. Not since Sigourney Weaver squared off against a female alien have we seen such rich opportunities for women on the big screen. (OK, maybe that's hyperbole. Maybe I'm overlooking the oeuvre of Nicole Holofcener. Fine. What if one day *Holofcener* wrote and directed a horror movie? The mind reels.)
Samuel Mullins is a Soul Divided. Once upon a time, he had a good life, making creepy wooden dolls, playing hide-and-seek with his daughter. (It's an alarming, modified version of hide-and-seek. The cat and mouse leave little notes for one another: "Please find me." "I'm already here." The cat and mouse set-up is, of course, a metaphor for the conflict to come: In playing chase, the father and daughter are enacting a safe version of the wars the Annabelle doll will launch within the next ninety minutes. I also love that "I'm already here" seems puzzling: Where is the father, if he's already in the room? Naturally, he jumps out of a corner, scares the *shit* out of his daughter, evokes thoughts of themes of duplicity and obfuscation, and also makes us wonder about the moral/amoral nature of his own character. A Gothic movie wants to keep you guessing. We don't know whether or not to trust Samuel Mullins, or his scary wife, who spends much of the movie in a shadowy bedchamber, hidden behind a "Phantom of the Opera" mask. This unnerving uncertainty is one of the great pleasures that a decent horror film has to offer.)
I won't tell the story of "Annabelle: Creation." I'll assume you've seen it. (Last week, it was the number one movie in America.) I'll just point out a few other treats. The scriptwriter pauses to note the casual cruelty among the little girls in the orphanage; to get rid of an unwanted interloper, the head Mean Girl says, "Go and hide and we'll find you!" And then when an acquaintance asks, "Aren't we going to go try to find that girl?" the Mean Girl just shrugs. (Everyday horrors--almost as creepy as the stuff of demon dolls and Phantom masks! I love that the script pauses to acknowledge this fact.) I very much enjoy the set-piece of the disabled-person motorized chair, which climbs up and down staircases, but may not go in the direction you'd like, when you'd like it to do so. (Part of the thrill of any competent horror movie is the way in which domestic objects become life-and-death tools in a chess game. A proto-Nerf gun becomes a way of testing an unknown chamber of terrors. A backyard well and a lantern take on roles we wouldn't normally assign to them. Also, a nice twist of this recent string of "mid-century prequel" horror movies--"The Ouija Prequel," "Annabelle: Creation," et al. is that we get to contemplate an earlier period in American history, a time when your proto-Nerf gun bullet was not made from foam, your doll was not made from plastic, your music ("You Are My Sunshine"--troubling!!) came not from a computer but from a record player, your water came not from pipes but from a well. "Annabelle: Creation"--visually arresting, from start to finish--takes us to an earlier period in American life and may make us feel ever so slightly curious about American history. And God bless it for that.) I love that the movie starts with a shocking car accident--it seems to come from nowhere, no matter how many movies of this sort you've seen--then jumps forward twelve years. In this way, it seems to borrow from Bette Davis's "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," which features a similar jump. The delight of the movie becomes the act of asking: "Precisely what happened in those twelve years? And who is the guilty party? Who is innocent? And how will the ghosts of an earlier decade impact our current characters, our current stars, whom we're watching today?"
Not all of "Creation" works. You shouldn't think too hard about the girls from this orphanage, or why they remain in the haunted house as long as they do. But see the movie anyway, for the consistently smart writing, for the wily, drunken camera, and for the erratic lightbulbs in the dingy barn. I enjoyed myself. There are many worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon!
Mullins's wife has a name, but let's just focus on the fact that she's in the person of actress Miranda Otto--from "Lord of the Rings," "What Lies Beneath," and "The Thin Red Line." Miranda Otto and Anthony LaPaglia as an embattled married couple--and I'm sold! You're not going to see THAT in "Dunkirk"!
Also, three cheers for "Annabelle: Creation," for trampling all over the Bechdel Test, without even making a big deal of it. Again and again, we see women speaking to one another--and are they speaking about a boy crush? No! The only dude is Anthony LaPaglia, and *no one* is getting sweaty over him! These girls are fretting together about how to defeat their nemesis--who, you guessed it, is an evil wooden *female* doll. Not since Sigourney Weaver squared off against a female alien have we seen such rich opportunities for women on the big screen. (OK, maybe that's hyperbole. Maybe I'm overlooking the oeuvre of Nicole Holofcener. Fine. What if one day *Holofcener* wrote and directed a horror movie? The mind reels.)
Samuel Mullins is a Soul Divided. Once upon a time, he had a good life, making creepy wooden dolls, playing hide-and-seek with his daughter. (It's an alarming, modified version of hide-and-seek. The cat and mouse leave little notes for one another: "Please find me." "I'm already here." The cat and mouse set-up is, of course, a metaphor for the conflict to come: In playing chase, the father and daughter are enacting a safe version of the wars the Annabelle doll will launch within the next ninety minutes. I also love that "I'm already here" seems puzzling: Where is the father, if he's already in the room? Naturally, he jumps out of a corner, scares the *shit* out of his daughter, evokes thoughts of themes of duplicity and obfuscation, and also makes us wonder about the moral/amoral nature of his own character. A Gothic movie wants to keep you guessing. We don't know whether or not to trust Samuel Mullins, or his scary wife, who spends much of the movie in a shadowy bedchamber, hidden behind a "Phantom of the Opera" mask. This unnerving uncertainty is one of the great pleasures that a decent horror film has to offer.)
I won't tell the story of "Annabelle: Creation." I'll assume you've seen it. (Last week, it was the number one movie in America.) I'll just point out a few other treats. The scriptwriter pauses to note the casual cruelty among the little girls in the orphanage; to get rid of an unwanted interloper, the head Mean Girl says, "Go and hide and we'll find you!" And then when an acquaintance asks, "Aren't we going to go try to find that girl?" the Mean Girl just shrugs. (Everyday horrors--almost as creepy as the stuff of demon dolls and Phantom masks! I love that the script pauses to acknowledge this fact.) I very much enjoy the set-piece of the disabled-person motorized chair, which climbs up and down staircases, but may not go in the direction you'd like, when you'd like it to do so. (Part of the thrill of any competent horror movie is the way in which domestic objects become life-and-death tools in a chess game. A proto-Nerf gun becomes a way of testing an unknown chamber of terrors. A backyard well and a lantern take on roles we wouldn't normally assign to them. Also, a nice twist of this recent string of "mid-century prequel" horror movies--"The Ouija Prequel," "Annabelle: Creation," et al. is that we get to contemplate an earlier period in American history, a time when your proto-Nerf gun bullet was not made from foam, your doll was not made from plastic, your music ("You Are My Sunshine"--troubling!!) came not from a computer but from a record player, your water came not from pipes but from a well. "Annabelle: Creation"--visually arresting, from start to finish--takes us to an earlier period in American life and may make us feel ever so slightly curious about American history. And God bless it for that.) I love that the movie starts with a shocking car accident--it seems to come from nowhere, no matter how many movies of this sort you've seen--then jumps forward twelve years. In this way, it seems to borrow from Bette Davis's "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," which features a similar jump. The delight of the movie becomes the act of asking: "Precisely what happened in those twelve years? And who is the guilty party? Who is innocent? And how will the ghosts of an earlier decade impact our current characters, our current stars, whom we're watching today?"
Not all of "Creation" works. You shouldn't think too hard about the girls from this orphanage, or why they remain in the haunted house as long as they do. But see the movie anyway, for the consistently smart writing, for the wily, drunken camera, and for the erratic lightbulbs in the dingy barn. I enjoyed myself. There are many worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon!
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