OK, this was not well regarded compared to the first film, The Conjuring. Oh well.
So we are back to the first 3 from The Conjuring. They are talking about the doll, and how they like to help people because they are nurses. I think this is the story of how the got the doll. I dunno.
So we have a couple who are expecting a new baby soon. Mia and John are the couple. He’s focused on work, she’s a pain in the ass. She is very “emotional”. He has a surprise for her, yup the doll. Mia is pumped. Mia has a thing for dolls apparently. We see something go down at the neighbor’s place, the dude killed his woman. Rest assured, she had it coming. Oh, this woke up Mia, so now she wakes up John, so she’s off to check it out. Yup, there’s a body, so he tells her to call an ambulance, and we see someone in the background creeping. The creeper has the doll. She is whispering, and a dude comes up from behind, stabs her in the belly. John tries to make the save, but he gets worked. The creepy bitch goes in the doll’s room and closes the door. The guy went to hit John and cops gunned him down. The creep lady is dead and bled on the doll, she committed suicide. They were part of a Satanic cult. The baby should be ok, but she is being put on bed rest per the doctor. They get home, he has cleaned everything. She doesn’t want the door open anymore. He brings her up the TV so she can chill.
At night, the baby mobile plays a song, the same as the music box in The Conjuring. . They wake up to noises, and it sounds like the sewing machine to me. OK, and I was right because it is a pretty distinct noise. He turns it off, goes upstairs, puts Annabelle in the rocking chair. The next day, the TV pisses her off, and she hears the rocking chair again and closes the door. Sweet, old school Doritos bag. So in hopes of getting a promotion, but he should go to a conference and be gone for like a day or two. Annabelle is in a different position, and Mia wants the doll gone. That was a way to throw away a month. And he puts her in the trash can, just like the previous movie. The cop comes and they get to talk and ask questions.
She is watching TV, using the sewing machine, popping popcorn, the thing overheats and explodes causing a fire. She backs away, trips, lands on her belly somehow. She gets pulled back to the kitchen. Some people break in and help her out. John gets to the hospital, apologizing for not being there, oh and Mia had the baby, and it’s a girl. He’s trying to enjoy his newborn, and she is worried about the house being cursed. So they move to Pasadena, probably he got the job.
The baby gets a little happy at church, so she walks out in the middle. That is one happy baby. The priest takes a picture of her and her new baby. They are still unpacking, and she is unpacking the boxes of dolls. What do we have in the box? Why it’s Annabelle. I am not shocked. John asks how she is there and says that he will throw her out, and Mia is like, nah, you did spend money on me after all.
That TV is F’N up again. Oh, Mia and the baby are sleeping. We see a person in white and dark hair, like the cultist that broke in. Yeah. Mia leaves and sees 2 kids and talks to them. The boy was drawing with crayons. She goes for a walk, gets a free book from Evelyn. She comes back and finds a bunch of drawings of a mom with a baby carriage getting closer and closer to a truck and then getting hit and killing the baby.
Mia listens to music, turns it off, it turns back on. She gets close to the window and gets knocked over by a gust of wind. Then a small child runs past her. She finally sees the little girl in the baby room. The little girl charges and when she comes through the door, she becomes a creepy adult. Yeah. John thinks this bitch is crazy. By the ways, who are the stars of Rosemary’s Baby? Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. Yeah, no coincidence there. I kept thinking about Rosemary’s Baby and decided to look it up as I remembered Mia. That’s a fun wall to pay homage to a great film. Mia is down in the basement where everybody has storage areas. She hears something, and a black baby carriage is shown at the end of the hall, it was pushed there but we don’t see by who or what. There is a baby crying loudly. She inspects it and there’s a bloody blanket. Then a black hand reaches out and she sees a demon looking guy. She tries using the elevator to escape, but the elevator stays on the same floor. She makes a mad dash for the stairs and sees that she is being chased by something, the same something. And she now has a nasty mark on her arm. The next day, she removes the bandage, and no mark.
She reached out to the detective and this time, she wants to hear him out. We see Annabelle the human before she got caught up in a cult. She asks for the cult’s purpose; He reveals that they were trying to conjure up the devil or demons. The cult was the disciples of the Ram I believe. So off to the bookstore she goes. This movie is pretty much boring me.
Mia returns home and grabs the baby out of the stroller. She then sees the evil bitch in the reflection, and the stroller rolls out in front of a truck. Yup. They get the priest there and I am losing so much interest. This was better when she was pregnant. The priest took the doll with him, and his radio signal is fucking up and he is listening to the baseball game, and he is sidetracked while driving. The radio said, “And may God have mercy on your soul!”. No car accident. He gets to church, goes to bring the doll in, and he sees demon bitch. Before he enters the church, he gets flung back. Demon bitch picks up Annabelle. I am singing “Take Me To Church” in my head. Father Perez is in the hospital. Evelyn and Mia are becoming BFF’s and she is spoiling Leah. Leah takes kindly to Evelyn. Evelyn’s daughter got killed in a car accident.
Father wakes up and tells John how evil the doll is. He goes to call Mia, but she can’t hear any of his message. There is a knocking at the door, Mia looks and it looks like Father Perez, but he has his back to her. He screamed “May God have mercy on your soul” and the door slammed shut and everything started turning on. Evelyn is like, we need to leave now. Mia goes to grab Leah, and all the dolls are all splattered in blood. Evelyn is like, forget the baby, we have to go. They hear something above and the demon attacks and knocks Evelyn out the door, and the door locks. Mia keeps hearing the baby cry, so she is looking all over. She sees Annabelle and is asking what she wants from her. We have a red crayon roll out to the hallway. Hey, a bunch of drawing on the walls of the baby room, and it says “her soul” and Annabelle is now in the crib, so she bashes Annabelle’s dome into the crib. She then sees her baby on the ground and thinks she is dead, but it was a doll all along. She says that there has to be another way, and the window has “your soul” written on it and the window opens and we hear it say your soul. Evelyn is up and trying to walk. John just made it there. Evelyn is trying to get back in. John is running up the stairs. Mia is on the ledge about to jump and has Annabell in her arms. Evelyn and John are trying to convince her not to. John saves her and pulls her back. Evelyn says a baby needs her mom. Evelyn is gonna kill herself instead to make it right….duh.Granted, I wanted Evelyn to be evil, but oh well. Evelyn jumped with Annabelle and is dead, and Leah showed up in the crib. Yawn.
6 months later, Father asks John and Mia if they have had any experiences since. He says that he hopes whoever gets the doll next can get the help that they need. And then he gives her a framed picture, the one that he took early in the movie. We see somebody looking for a gift for her daughter who is a nurse, the same bitch at the beginning of the 2 movies. And then they tell us that the doll stays in a case with Ed and Lorraine Warren.
End film.
This film was ok for a one and done, but nothing I would buy or re-watch. It is not a very good movie. I feel like it had so much more potential, but once the baby was born, it became a different film. At that point, they tried going Rosemary’s Baby on us, but without the right script. I don’t blame the actors, they were fine. It just didn’t work for me. It actually had a few very scary images, and yet aside from that, the rest was boring, monotonous, and uninspiring. It’s a shame as I wanted it to be awesome. If we could have had more info on the cult, maybe some film footage that spent some time on them, more than they did, it could have added way more to the film. Like the home invasion was good, but could have been epic, or even gone super cheesy like Child’s Play and made a bigger spectacle out of it. They just aimed for the middle and didn’t go outside the box. That’s a damn shame.
Final rating: 4.0
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- New Line Cinema (presents)
- RatPac-Dune Entertainment (in association with)
- Atomic Monster
- The Safran Company
- Evergreen Media Group (uncredited)
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