An Annabelle By Any Other Name...

Welcome to the Annual February Shortening! In honor of the shortest month on a blog written by a short woman, all posts are devoted to stories about vertically challenged villains. If you, reader of any height, have your own mini-horror to share, do so in the comments and I'll include you in a final post roundup as the calendar changes!

Horror trends don't die easily. In fact, once they prove viable, they spread through every budget and corner of the world. 

When Annabelle's formula became a bona fide success, low budget horror directors must have squealed with glee. "You mean we can make a killer doll movie WHERE THE DOLL DOESN'T MOVE?" 

Cue Robert, and its dozens of sequels or loose remakes sitting still on some of the free streaming sites. As I do every year in anticipation of February, I'd been circling various sources to find some new porcelain blood. Surely I haven't watched EVERY killer doll movie made with a budget over $10, right? Tubi is positively dripping in the genre, and while I'm sure there are some pearls in those bargain oysters, I don't always have the stamina to risk watching something less well-made than my kittens' artwork. 

Hence this year's safer bet. Netflix has particular standards when it comes to video quality, meaning most of its offerings these days have a higher budget than your typical Tubi find. Indonesia's The Doll (of which there are three installments and counting) has been on my radar for a while and the day has finally come to see how another part of the world sees immobile doll horror. 

Quick Plot: Much like The Conjuring, our story begins with a quick side tale that won't really have much bearing on the rest of the film. A trio of siblings get stuck with a mysterious doll who seems to love playing hide-and-seek. When it inevitably turns violent, they seek out Laras and Rendi, Indonesia's own Ed and Lorraine Warren variants. 

 
You're probably best off forgetting what I just said, since after the credits roll, we're reintroduced to that very same doll, who will indeed be reacquainted with Laras an hour later (though she seems to have no memory of this). Ah well, moving on!

Meet incredibly attractive young couple Daniel, a construction worker, and Anya, who fixes up dolls. Daniel's new promotion moves them into a high end rental but on his first day on the job, he's stuck in a pickle: his crew refuses to cut down a tree that marks the spot where a family was recently murdered. It doesn't help that there's a familiar looking baby doll attached to it. But orders are orders and before you can be friends to the end, the tree is down and the doll somehow ends up in Anya's hands. 

It doesn't take long for things to go downhill. Strange events befall the couple's new home. Friendly neighbor Niken insists it's supernatural and links Anya up with Laras, who gathers that the doll is holding the angry soul of the murdered little girl. 

Up until the final act, The Doll is pretty darn beholden to the Annabelle blueprint but thankfully, the film takes a rather shocking turn for its grand finale. It's a fairly slow roll into its big climax but I'm happy to say it's worth the ride. Yes, this is ultimately more "haunted ghost child" than "fun killer doll", and yes, I certainly prefer the latter, but hey: this ain't bad. 

High Notes

Some of its CGI style does fall flat, but there are plenty of refreshingly creepy setups (a raincoat comes to mind) that manage to be effectively unsettling in just the style you want for this kind of ghost story. Plus, DUMMY DEATH!

Low Points

My stance on "we can cut to a reaction shot of a creepy doll and call it a killer doll movie" has not changed, even if some films manage to make that aspect work. The doll of The Doll (I don't think she's ever even named) isn't even visually interesting...let alone active. 

Lessons Learned

Evil doll activity smells quite a bit like very bad farts

It doesn't matter if the doll is ugly: what matters is that a boy likes you enough to give it to you

People who love fiction love to make up stories

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Doll probably sits comfortably (obviously: the thing doesn't move) in the middle shelf of my favorite subgenre. I wouldn't revisit this particular film, but it whetted my appetite more than enough to continue with the series. So we say it here: The Shortening 2024 will begin with The Doll 2! (sets Google alert as reminder). 

Maybe by then the damn thing will do more than blink. 

AnnaBOY!

I'm the rare geriatric millennial horror fan who genuinely enjoys ALL the Annabelle movies. On one hand, that shouldn't be surprising: they're well-made genre flicks that deeply understand their audience, and they star a killer doll! But on the other, they star a killer doll who, well, doesn't actually do anything.

The great Stacie Ponder has written an outstanding treatise on why Annabelle rocks. The downside, however, of this porcelain queen's success is that once other low budget horror filmmakers figured out that you can make a killer doll movie without even MOVING the main attraction, the overall quality of an already questionable subgenre had nowhere to go but down. These are movies that make Charles Band seem ambitious! 

Sadly, thirteen years into The Shortening, I'm simply running out of doll-based horror. 2015's Robert might well be the last non-Tubi made-for-pennies film I haven't clocked, so we're diving in and hope 2022 brings us a toychest full of more options.

Quick Plot: Meet Paul and Jenny Otto, a fairly awful British couple who casually fire their veteran housekeeper Agatha and bemoan how HARD it is...on them. Their much kinder son Gene is sad to lose such a close presence in his life, but Agatha, our senile but sassy MVP, doesn't go out quietly. She leaves Gene a special gift: Robert, a horrific glassy eyed doll with a history of destroying families. 

It doesn't take long for Robert to unravel the fragile Jenny, a stressed artist already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. If you're hearing echoes of ANOTHER cheaply made evil doll-destroys-frayed-family-without-actually-moving-on-camera movie, your ears do not need cleaning: while Robert definitely owes Annabelle some residuals, diehard fans of Cathy's Curse might be left wondering if this is an unofficial remake. 

I don't have time to go into all the reasons why should see Cathy's Curse (know that it was the very first film I covered here AND that I once introduced a screening of it at the Alamo Drafthouse) because it would be unfair to this, well, not very good variation of it. I SUPPOSE Robert is a better made film than that 1977 Canadian treasure, but honestly, so is that 30 second clip from the time my cat accidentally stepped on my iPhone's video button.

Written and directed by Andrew Jones, a man who has since made three more Robert movies and a barrel of similar looking titles, Robert is, you know, a killer doll movie that does everything it can to never show the doll killing. That wouldn't be a terrible thing if done well (see Annabelle and even the cheaper made Heidi) but when the stuff that DOES happen involves characters auditioning for an off-brand  antidepressant commercial's montage, it's not particularly fun. 

Still, Robert has his charms. Heck, his first act of violence is to repeat Chucky's opening flour footprint move! That's something, right?

High Points

I like a movie that has a kid who isn't the worst. Little Gene doesn't get to do much, but honestly, there's something very refreshing about just how chill he is about having a doll that's threatening the livelihood of anybody that comes in his orbit (and yes, do understand that after a lifetime of watching Charles Band productions get made with smaller budgets even as inflation soars, I am well aware that my standards are very, very low)

Low Points

Seriously: am I supposed to sympathize with an awful upper class couple who fire their long-term nanny and spend the two minutes it takes to make the decision complaining about how it makes THEIR lives hard? I hope not, because as soon as this happened (5 minutes into the movie) I was, and continue to be 100% Team Robert

Lessons Learned

Cursed dolls have a particularly sharp hatred of young women working in their home

Not helping your wife find answers to her mental illness is bad husbandry, but it's still better than cheating

You can't lock an evil spirit in the shed

Rent/Bury/Buy

The phrase "everything is relative" may be cliche, but it's never truer when applied to the evaluation of horror. In the scheme of cinema, Robert is pretty bad. In relation to other horror movies, it's just not very good. But compared to other killer doll films? Probably right in the middle. Compared SPECIFICALLY to non-studio-produced low budget productions? Above average.

Folks, I'm a very particular type of film fan.

Home Is Where the Haunting Is

We haven't had a Shortening yet without evil dolls, and damned if we're going to start now!

Dedicated readers might be curious as to why I've never before used this space to tackle this horror decade's most prominent porcelain villain. Part of may stem from the fact that Annabelle, you know, doesn't actually DO anything. 

It's kind of beautiful, and if you really want to dive deeper into just how grand a dame this toy is, I urge you to read Final Girl blogger Stacie Ponder's brilliant essay on the subject. 

Now obviously, I don't mind a doll that does nothing. Observe my complete adoration with Cathy's Curse and you'll understand that sometimes, a creepy pile of fabric with a face is enough in itself without Chucky-esque one-liners. And the truth is, I've genuinely enjoyed the first two Annabelle movies. So why not continue the journey?

Quick Plot: Beginning just a few minutes following the events of the first Annabelle, Lorraine and Ed Warren have successfully transported the titular doll to their basement of horrors. Locked behind blessed church glass, she sits back and waits.

The Warrens are called out of town to do some ghost hunting, leaving their daughter Judy (last year's Shortening queen, The Bad Seed/The Haunting of Hill House's Mckenna Grace) in the care of kind teenage babysitter Mary Ellen (Jumanji's delightful Madison Iseman). While Mary Ellen was hoping to play some board games and bake a birthday cake for the lonely Judy, her wilder best friend Daniela shows up with other plans. 

And roller skates.

I can't imagine what world we live in where a ten-year-old girl can put on shoes with wheels for the first time in her LIFE and only manage to have one fall around the block. But perhaps the PTSD from the one time I attempted to roller boogie in the 4th grade just still burns.

Anyway, Daniela is eager to explore the Warrens' collection in the hopes of finding some kind of communication line to her recently deceased father. Naturally, she ends up freeing our favorite blond in the process, along with a whole batch of demons, ghosts, and for good measure, CGI werewolves.

Making his directorial debut, Gary Dauberman (who penned all three installments) creates a very stable PG-13 haunted house feel that should come across as a far bigger compliment than it might sounds. While The Conjuring universe has had its highs and lows, the Annabelle series has, for me, been consistently enjoyable. 

Even if the doll doesn't do sh$t.

With Annabelle Comes Home (or Annabelle: Homecoming, as I've been calling it for last year), Dauberman gives us what I affectionally call slumber party horror. Stakes are raised and the cast sells the terror, but at a certain point, the comfort level of (SPOILER ALERT) knowing that your extremely likable, extremely young cast is going to be okay. 

There's a place for hard, cruel horror, and another for spooky jump scares with heart. When done well, that latter spot is a darn good time.

High Points

There was a point early on in Annabelle Comes Home where I worried we'd be following a very dumb and slightly cruel teenager, but one of the nicest things about this film is that its characters are generally nice. It's amazing how far that goes for a film

Low Points

I know there are many real-life people who have issues with the actual Warrens, but fictionally, it's hard to accept that a couple who've spent their lives dealing with supernatural horrors would be so casual as to trust a teenager and a mere deadbolt to supervise their daughter and a house full of evil objects

If you can't nail the design (particularly a CGI one) of a werewolf, think very, very hard about whether it's worth including one in your film

Lessons Learned

The law of Checkhov's inhaler never fails

There's no such thing as enticing pizza in the horror genre

The art of wooing involves rock 'n roll

Rent/Bury/Buy

Annabelle Comes Home isn't groundbreaking, but it's a solid romp that I found incredibly satisfying. As a franchise, it's taken an interesting journey in focusing on adults, children, and now teenagers. I'll be curious to see where it goes next. 

When You Wish Upon an Evil Chinese Music Box

If Kazaam has taught one thing, it's that Shaquille O'Neal always had bigger career potential as a product spokesman than film actor. 

If it taught us one more, it's that magical wish granters always have a price.

Quick Plot: Teenage Clare hasn't exactly had a charmed life. As a little girl, she witnessed her mother (Law & Order's favorite surprise lesbian Elisabeth Rohm) commit suicide. Dad Ryan Phillippe (yes, we're at the point in time where Ryan Phillippe is dad to a teenager and yes, that makes me feel old) is now an out-of-work saxophonist who makes some cash off his dumpster diving findings. 

Also, she's like, super not popular.

Life takes an upturn when Clare's dad brings home a mysterious box from a cemetery garbage pile. The ancient Chinese writing seems to suggest it grants wishes, leading Clare to give it a go, wishing her high school nemesis "rots." Cue the mysterious skin disease. In a completely unrelated turn of evens, Clare's beloved golden retriever mysteriously dies.

It takes a shocking number of similar granted wish/dead pal pairings before Clare can admit the obvious: the haunted box will grant her seven wishes, but each one must be paid for with the violent death of someone close. With the benefits of Clare's wishes growing bigger each time, can she stop herself from, you know, continuing to murder her friends and family?

Directed by the better-than-everyone-says-it-is Annabelle and way-worse-than-you-know-even-though-you-might-not-know-it-existed The Butterfly Effect 2's John R. Leonetti, Wish Upon is kind of a delight. A good chunk of the credit probably goes to Barbara Marshall, whose script is equally in tune to teenagers as her previous credit, Viral.

Played with a perfectly immature intensity by Joey King, Clare is a selfish, impulsive young woman who makes for a fantastically complicated protagonist. It's easy to judge her (admittedly very irresponsible and immoral) actions, but the film does a successful job of putting us into her mindset. As the poor, motherless artist bullied by the rich pretty kids, we understand why she'd be so easily seduced by something that can make her dreams come true. It's almost like a horror version of Lady Bird.

Wish Upon isn't a modern classic, but it's a solid, well-paced and made little horror movie that's simply much better than it could have been. The entire cast brings something interesting, from veterans like Phillippe and an ill-fated Sherilyn Fenn to the diverse, realistic teenagers (which includes Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's rising star Ki Hong Lee, Stranger Things' own Barb, Shannon Purser, and the incredibly charismatic Sydney Park). 

High Points
EVERYONE, this movie has a Most Popular Girl montage. A MOST POPULAR GIRL MONTAGE I SAID

Low Points
The Final Destination-ing of the death scenes is fun at first, but by the fourth case of teasing out what random contraption is going to slay which character, it feels a little tired

Lessons Learned

The price of quality ancient Chinese translation is a quality batch of wontons

When it comes to making wishes through evil box genies, use your adjectives wisely

HOW MANY MORE TIMES CAN I SAY TO BE MORE CAREFUL AROUND GARBAGE DISPOSALS BEFORE SOMEONE LISTENS????

Rent/Bury/Buy

Wish Upon is streaming on Amazon Prime and makes a great way to enjoy 90 minutes of your life. You probably won't think much about it after the fact, but it's perfectly engaging during its run. 

I'll Buy That For a Doll-ar

I've often written about The Asylum and its occasional knack for churning out surprisingly high quality ripoffs of bigger budgeted horror. For every dozen quickies like Sunday School Musical and A Haunting In Salem, there's that one Paranormal Entity that manages to still be a made-in-one-week-after-the-trailer-for-a-sure-to-be-hit-movie rolled out that somehow makes you say, "Hey, that wasn't so bad."

Like 2011's The Ouija Experiment, today's Heidi is not actually an Asylum property, but from the cover and synopsis, you'd be forgiven for making that mistake. Just look at the artwork here:

And the actual doll featured in the film:

Clearly, Heidi's producers are hoping you'd see the title go by and say, "Oh, that's the spin-off to The Conjuring, right?" Based on its 2014 date, it's hard to know whether Heidi was made before, after, or alongside Annabelle. Much like that film, it centers on a haunted baby doll that doesn't follow the standard conventions of wide-talking Good Guys or stabby tiny porcelain-hand cinema. And despite my instincts and opinion of the first hour of this low budget indie, much like Annabelle, it shockingly works.

Quick Plot: Teens Ryan and Jack do that thing that teens in the 21st century apparently do all the time: record every moment of their lives on videocameras and GoPros. When Ryan gets a gig housesitting for an eccentric neighbor, they see big potential in incorporating a mysteriously unbranded doll found in the attic into their antics. As you might surmise, the doll is named Heidi, and she does not like to be hugged.

Before long, a wave of bizarre violence is spreading through Ryan's life. Aforementioned neighbor (and her poor pet birds) turn up dead, while Jack's massive house party ends in carnage when he and his younger brother are found gutted. We don't have to pull up our bookmark for doesthedogdie.com to know the fate of Ryan's sweet cocker spaniel.

Written and directed on what I assume to be a minuscule budget by newcomer Daniel Ray, Heidi is a weirdly fascinating little found footage tale that either found its footing as it went or is secretly one of the smartest horror films I've seen in quite a while. Like almost every handheld teen-centric indie of recent years, it starts with insufferable leads with racist undertones and yet somehow, 90 minutes later, I found myself thinking, "this was kind of fantastic"

I am as shocked as you are. 

Ryan (Samuel Brian) is nothing special. Like almost every found footage film made in recent years, he's a middle class white kid without a clever bone in his body who tends to say, "what the f*ck?" over and over again when investigating strange occurrences without turning on the light switch. 

And yet...

Look, I'm not really ready to say that Heidi is a great horror film. The acting never really clicks in place, the dialogue is often squirm-worthy, and the characters make some incredibly dumb decisions along the way. But at a very particular point about one hour in, I found myself realizing that I was fully invested in the action. Like Annabelle, this is a film that successfully creates a villain without ever really showing it act. We KNOW Heidi is evil because, you know, we're watching a horror movie called Heidi, but you do have to extend some respect to a no-budget movie that manages to get you to that place of discomfort without giving you the goods. 

When I watched the truly devastating Megan Is Missing a few years ago, I found myself admiring how skillfully the filmmaker had reverse Trojan horse'd me, introducing fairly awful teenage characters that I gritted my teeth at, only to slowly reel me in to the deeper, sadder lives these girls were actually living. Heidi doesn't do this with its characters (who ultimately go from insufferable to tolerable), but it kind of does with its actual storytelling. Did Ray and his team just get more comfortable in front of and behind the camera the longer they filmed, or was this the film's actual intent: trick its audience into expecting another found footage yawn, and slowly turn it into an actual compelling story?

I don’t want to oversell Heidi, but darnit: I enjoyed this film. Once I got past its initial sloppiness, I was genuinely involved in the story, and actually nervous about how it would play out. It’s certainly not for everyone, but as evil doll films go (something I might have a smidgen of experience with), it’s new, fresh, and shockingly, kind of scary.

High Points

Judge me if ye will, but that last shot...it got me

Low Points

There are plenty of things to pull apart in Heidi, and your ultimate decision to watch it in full will rest on your patience at getting through some 40 minutes or so of bland characters being kind of awful (and occasionally racist)

Lessons Learned

When organizing a home rave, don't skimp on the bouncer. A quality door man will really take your party to the next level

If you think that a doll is evil and responsible for the death of several people close to you, maybe you should do something more permanent than simply sitting it down in your closet and closing the door

As of 2014, teenagers still use the term “boo yah”

The Winning Line

"His friend, a fellow prankster, was unavailable for comment," is not a comment usually made by a newscaster when reporting on the mysterious death of a teenager. But it sure helps move some exposition along!

Rent/Bury/Buy

It's hard to come out and fully say with confidence that I recommend Heidi (currently streaming on Amazon Prime). Those who have issues with found footage or amateur horror may not make it very far, even with a slim 90 minute run time. But as someone who OFTEN has problems with these kinds of films, allow me to say: give Heidi a chance. Credit to writer/director Daniel Ray and his team. I don’t know how much was intended and how much just sorta happened, but the end result satisfied me.