Take, for instance, their trashing of ffolkes on their Sneak Previews end-of-year episode “The Worst Films of 1980” (where the movie found itself nestled in between such true stinkers as The Blue Lagoon and Can’t Stop the Music, the latter reviewed here). There’s no denying that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were both excellent critics, but they could get remarkably sloppy with details. But say this for the film’s titular doll: In a celebrity death match, it’s a given that she would eviscerate that wimpy new incarnation of Chucky.īlu-ray extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes and deleted scenes.Īnthony Perkins, James Mason and Roger Moore in ffolkes (Photo: Kino)įFOLKES (1980). Of course, any edifice can probably be made menacing with the right angles and proper lighting - for instance, the 2007 Spanish gem (reviewed here) managed to turn a Barcelona apartment building into Hell on Earth - but director Gary Dauberman and cinematographer Michael Burgess find more menace in the early-‘70s décor than they do in any of the horrific happenings. Poltergeist made the haunted suburban home memorable by treating it as a roller coaster ride, but by going for straight ambience, Annabelle Comes Home has no backup when said atmospherics fail to materialize. Part of the problem is the setting of the Warren residence, which proves to be woefully inadequate as a haunted house.
It’s all rather tedious, resulting in a series of jump-scares that lead to neither jumps nor scares. As initially seen in The Conjuring, the doll is now in the possession of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga again playing characters based on a pair of real-life shysters who made a living peddling this nonsense), so this entry wonders what would happen if Annabelle busted loose and wreaked havoc on the Warren homestead.
After that, there really wasn’t much else to relate about the antique doll, so Annabelle Comes Home tacks on what amounts to a hastily scrawled postscript. As far as unnecessary sequels go, both 2014’s Annabelle and 2017’s Annabelle: Creation made fairly convincing cases for their existence by explaining the origins of the spooky doll first referenced in 2013’s The Conjuring. Ratings are on a four-star scale.) Katie Sarife in Annabelle Comes Home (Photo: Warner)ĪNNABELLE COMES HOME (2019).
(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray and DVD. Doug Bradley in Hellraiser (Photo: Arrow)