Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/398122
OCTOBER 15-21, 2014 UCW 21 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM I didn't love The Conjuring that much and I'm not a huge fan of the sequel, Annabelle (98 minutes) either. Between its reliance on cheap horror movie tropes and its insistence that characters become living, breathing clichés, I was not pleased. Perhaps my biggest issue with the film was the fact that most of it was devoted to imperiling women, first a pregnant woman and then a new mother and her baby. Before you start rolling your eyes, I get the fact that it is a horror movie and horrible things will happen to innocent and/or helpless members of the cast. What I object to is the stupid situations female characters get into on their way to advancing the plot. Annabelle starts with the opening scene from The Conjuring. The nurses are telling Ed and Lorraine Warren about the haunted doll when the scene transitions to a church. John and pregnant Mia Gordon (Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis) are talking to their neighbors (Brian Howe and Kerry O'Malley). Then, the neighbors give them a ride home. The audience finds out that the neighbors' daughter, Annabelle (Tree O'Toole) ran off with some murderous hippies, as the children of the middle class so often did in the 1970's. Later that night, while Mia does chick stuff, John blah blahs some androcentric entitled nonsense about how the child he helped create will be a real barrier to getting his MD (at least, that's the gist of it). Realizing his narcissism is upsetting his wife and wanting to avoid an argument which would require him to acknowledge her feelings and do something about them, he brings out the ugliest, most obviously intended for evildoing, doll ever created this side of a Good Guy doll. It soon becomes clear that Mia actually wanted this particular doll for her extensive and creepy collection, and some of the sympathy generated by her lousy marriage evaporates. To make matters worse, she gives the ugly thing a place of pride on a shelf in the baby's room, surrounded by other lifeless pink plastic avatars of malevolence. I hope she's looking forward to being screamed into wakefulness every time her new baby notices the dolls' cold dead eyes looking down at her. Next, some people get violently, horribly murdered. The main characters are more or less intact, but Mia is ordered to stay on bed rest. Luckily, she can spend her time sewing baby clothes and watching soap operas to distract her from the fact that she will be slowly going insane from being confined with only her jerk of a husband for company. It strikes me as very odd that she apparently has no social contact outside of the priest (Tony Amendola) and some random bookstore owner lady (Alfre Woodard) she meets after moving away from the murder house. Overall, fans of The Conjuring in the mood for more of the same during the Halloween season can kill two hours and walk away not entirely unsatisfied. Genre fans in need of some real scares would do better to take a look at Netflix for some forgotten classics. Do You Believe in Dolls? Annabelle (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. Cliffdale Recreation Center 6404 Cliffdale Road North Regional Library 855 McArthur Road Hope Mills Recreation Center 5766 Rockfish Road East Regional Library 4809 Clinton Road Smith Recreation Center 1520 Slater Avenue E.E. Miller Recreation Center 1347 Rim Road Oct. 23 - Oct. 31, 2014 Monday - Friday 12 p.m. - 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. Board of Elections Office 227 Fountainhead Lane Oct. 23, 24, 27 & 28, 2014 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. Oct. 29, 30 & 31, 2014 8 a.m. - 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 9 a.m - 1 p.m. One-Stop Voting