Director: David F. Sandberg
Writers: Gary Dauberman, Gary Dauberman
Stars: Anthony LaPaglia, Samara Lee, Miranda Otto
Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2ukKHLj
Synopsis
We start out with scenes inside a dollmaker’s workshop as he assembles a doll. It’s the Mullins Toy Company, and the doll is Annabelle. The dollmaker stops to play hide and seek with his daughter when she leaves him a note saying, “Find Me.” On the way home from church the next day, the daughter, whose name is Bee, is hit by a car and killed. Credits roll.
Twelve years later, six young girls are in the back of a car, moving to a new orphanage. The Mullins’ have turned their home into an orphanage. These six girls and their nun guardian, Sister Charlotte, are going to be staying at the Mullins place, and the driver mentions that Mrs. Mullins was involved in an accident years ago. There’s even a stair lift for Janice, the little girl who is recovering from polio. We quickly learn that Bee’s room is kept locked.
Janice remains behind while the others go off exploring, and she’s left alone in her room when we see Bee’s ghost in there with her. That night, Janice finds a note on the floor “Find Me.” The notes lead to the locked door. She goes inside and finds a little girl’s room, complete with elaborate dollhouse. Inside the closet, she finds the Annabelle doll and some weirdness goes on.
Linda, one of the other girls, is playing hide and seek and winds up under the stairs, where she sees Ananabelle. Some of the girls think they see Mrs. Mullins, but her husband says Mrs. Mullins hasn’t been able to walk for years.
Bee wants Janice’s soul. At least this demon starts out looking like Bee. While everyone’s asleep, the demon chases Janice around the house. The demon injures her, and she winds up in a wheelchair, maybe permanently. Mr. and Mrs. Mullins start to wonder if “the trouble is starting up again.”
Linda encounters the doll and the demon, but they seem to ignore her. Valak, the evil nun, torments Janice in the barn some more and finally pukes in her mouth. Linda tells Mr. Mullins what Janice saw in Bee’s bedroom, and he freaks out and goes into the room. He is very quickly and painfully killed.
Linda then drops the doll into the old well, and the demon tries to pull her in as well, but Sister Charlotte rescues her. They both run inside, where the doll is still there awaiting them.
Mrs. Mullins finally explains to the Sister that she and Mr. Mullins made a deal with a demon to bring back their daughter Bee, whose real name was Annabelle. It took advantage of them and clawed Mrs. Mullins’s eye out. They put the demon in the doll and locked it away in that closet, but not forever, apparently. Not long after, they find Mrs. Mullin’s top half nailed to the wall. We don’t know where her bottom half went.
Various characters get chased around the house and grounds by various creatures for while, until Sister Charlotte shoves Janice and the doll into the closet where the doll was meant to be locked up. They run outside as the house shakes apart.
The police come, and they open up the secret room. They find only the doll and a hole in the wall. The next day, the priest comes out with the doll and he says it’s fine now because he blessed it. He offers it to the girls, but none of them want the creepy thing, so he takes it with him.
Some time later, Mrs. and Mrs. Higgins, the neighbors from the previous movie, go to the orphanage and adopt Linda, who now calls herself Annabelle. Twelve years later, we see the murder scene from the other movie from their point of view. It was Linda, now called Annabelle, who was the crazy cultist woman in the first Annabelle movie.
Commentary
The first Annabelle movie was slow and pretty bland, but this one was much improved. The best effect was when Mr. Mullin’s hand was broken. The ending tied right in with the other Annabelle film, but this one happened first of all the Annabelle movies, so this is a good standalone film. It’s not the first Conjuring film, as The Nun takes place in 1952.