Hey there, Doll-Face, Check Out This Creepy Trailer For ANNABELLE
Last summer's The Conjuring was a gigantic hit that probably even surprised the Warner Bros execs who opted to let it go out in the middle of summer with an R rating. Its 137m gross was the highest for an R-rated horror movie in over a decade, and even prompted FilmDistrict to put "From The Director of THE CONJURING" on its ads for Insidious 2 - unusual to see on a sequel from another studio (it worked, the film outgrossed the original despite being less well-loved). But the true mark of its success is that it has actually spawned two sequels; a direct followup due in 2015, and this year's Annabelle, a spinoff based on the film's creepy-ass doll.
If you recall the first Conjuring, Annabelle the doll wasn't really part of the main story and only had a few minutes of screentime. She was mostly used as context, an introduction into the world of Ed and Lorraine Warren, giving us some background on these characters before they met up with our hero Perron family, not really appearing again until much later to add some tension to the Warren's personal lives. But these brief sequences struck a nerve, and so now she gets the spotlight in this prequel film written by Gary Dauberman, due in theaters on October 3rd. Directed by John Leonetti (the first film's cinematographer, who has shot most of Wan's other films as well), the film focuses on Annabelle's early days of scaring the living shit out of everyone that sees her.
Conjuring also had a terrific trailer that opted to show an abridged version of a scare sequence, an unusual approach for a horror trailer as they are usually seemingly edited off of a template. The Annabelle spot sort of splits the difference; giving us longer-than-average peeks at a few scenes, offering a glimpse of the movie as a whole - and it looks effectively creepy (and I'm not even a big "dolls are inherently scary" guy). It also recalls Wan's underrated Dead Silence more than once; hopefully Annabelle's box office fortunes are better than that ill-fated entry in Wan's filmography. Wan is only producing this one, but he's roped in Conjuring composer Joseph Bishara to give it some continuity, and I wouldn't be surprised if they got Patrick Wilson and/or Vera Farmiga to pop in for a surprise cameo at the end, as they'll be back for Conjuring 2 (now in pre-production).
What do you guys think? Is Annabelle worthy of her own movie, or did she work in Conjuring BECAUSE her appearance was so limited?
