Annabelle ( 2014 )

My review---

A beautiful blonde expecting mother and her husband undergo a real life nightmare when their neighbours' daughter ( who had become a member of a satanic cult ) and her boyfriend kills the neighbours and very nearly succeeds in involving the expectant mother and her husband in the physical violence before the killing....

......And their ( and ours ) real life nightmare has just begun---for the killers manage to infect a doll named 'Annabelle' successfully with evil spirits in the their house before finishing the bloodshed and themselves....

The doll itself is ugly enough to give you the jitters , but the film makers are hardly satisfied with that.....

For soon terrible things ( I wont tell what terrible things because then it will spoil your fun ) begin to happen , forcing the couple and their newborn daughter to move to another part of the country in order to avoid further calamity . But the doll which they had discarded follows them....

As expected , the newborn daughter is the target of the doll's wrath , and evil things begin to happen in the new house too....

So what to do about it ??
Since the alleged existence of evil spirits is linked to belief in God , the solution to the problem is to be found obviously in religion . And so , a priest is called in to get rid of the spirit . As expected , the evil spirit tries to get rid of the priest instead....for you haven't got entertainment which is your money's worth fully yet....

That leaves the friendly neighbourhood black woman to turn to help....or does she need help herself ??---for she's grieving for her dead daughter who get killed in an accident she herself caused....

And who are those kids who draw drawings showing the newborn daughter being killed by being crushed by a transport bus on the streets ??

This one helluva persistent ghost....or is it really a ghost or some demonic influence ??
What is the satanic cult which the original murderers were part of ??

Watch the movie for the answers....

Thankfully the climax does not show any done to death exorcism scenes---I get thoroughly bored with them and all the jumping and pumping of bodies with grunting noises as the ghost gets exorcised produces no scares in my mind.....

Which brings us to the most important part of the film....indeed that of any horror film---the chills and thrills what else....
And the film does deliver on that part upto some extent.....
Many of them are old tricks---like the possessed doll itself , or the scenes where the young woman is left alone with the child to face the fury of the evil spirits at night after darkness falls....
The doll rocks in a chair all by herself , doors get mysteriously closed , strange sounds appear out of nowhere , spinning machines start working by themselves without being touched , and heavy books fall suddenly on the innocent child nearly killing it....

But on one or two occasions while watching the film I thought about leaving the theater because of the scares---and this is a first for me , for I never normally get too scared easily....

The ghost gets flamboyant towards the climax , and drops all pretense of subtlety in the end as it attacks openly....

It's dead of night in India as i write this review , and my constant looking behind my back to see if any ghosts are there is proof that the film has produced an effect on me....

Verdict--Scary enough .