***ANNABELLE: CREATION - Official Trailer 2
If we have learned anything from the Cooking Channel, it’s that talent is defined not by the ingredients you use, but how you use them. By that measure, director David F. Sandberg is an alchemist of the first order, taking the base — even leaden — components of horror and whipping them into a shivery chiffon of dread.
The Swedish filmmaker did it with his debut feature, “Lights Out,” which milked a deceptively simple yet sublimely spooky premise — the boogeyman only appears when the lights go out — for all it was worth.
He has done it again — with even cheesier material — taking the cliche-filled pantry of the devil-doll prequel “Annabelle: Creation” and turning out a dish that, while pulled together from the familiar components of the ghost story, is uncommonly, nerve-wrackingly satisfying.
Mr. Sandberg’s recipe mixes bits and pieces from a screenplay by Gary Dauberman, who also wrote the much less effective “Annabelle,” a 2014 spinoff from the universe of “The Conjuring.” The 1950s-set tale, which centers on orphans living in a remote house with balky electricity, a drafty dumbwaiter and an abundance of secret crawl spaces, also features: a locked room, a dead child, a well, a reclusive invalid who wears a “Phantom of the Opera”-style half-mask and, for crying out loud, a nightmarish scarecrow.
The house’s proprietor is a retired dollmaker, whose magnum opus is the titular, demented-looking puppet, one you wouldn’t expect to see on any sane person’s bookshelf, let alone in the toy aisle.
Twelve years after losing their daughter, Bee (Samara Lee), in a car accident, Sam and Esther Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto) open their home to six orphaned girls and a nun (Stephanie Sigman). The youngest of the girls are sisters Linda (Lulu Wilson) and Janice (Talitha Bateman), the latter of whom walks with a leg brace and crutch as the result of polio. Mr. Sandberg makes good use of her limited mobility, as you might expect.
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