Fans of smash hit The Conjuring spinoff Annabelle will enjoy this enticing sneak peek at David F. Sandberg’s Annabelle: Creation (formerly Annabelle 2). The full trailer will arrive tomorrow, but on the basis of this snippet, we can see the significance of the movie’s new title. In close up, we watch an unknown toy-maker assembling the very first Annabelle doll and gently placing her in a wooden box for whatever unfortunate child receives it as a present.
Often seen as the spiritual successor to the Child’s Play films, the original Annabelle managed to get some genuine scares from its rather Goosebumps premise. The titular evil doll is brought to life when a killer Satanist slits her throat over the doll, which obviously possesses it and turns it into a pint-size murder machine. It then acts as a conduit to demons and all kinds of supernatural nastiness.
Now, given that Annabelle is a normal doll until she’s baptized in murderous Satanist suicide blood, it’s a little perplexing to see multiple copies of her being created. Are they going to douse them all in the blood of people who’ve done super evil stuff? Then again, maybe I’m thinking a little too hard about a horror film sequel featuring a creepy little doll. Audiences went unexpectedly bananas for Annabelle back in 2014, as the movie grossed over $256M on a $6.5M budget, making this sequel a financial inevitability.
Will Annabelle: Creation repeat the original film’s astonishing success? The first one had the benefit of a Halloween friendly release date on October 3rd, while this outing has to jostle with a busy summer blockbuster lineup when it hits cinemas on August 11th. Time will tell if audiences are still hungry to see a creepy doll menacing people, but either way, we’ll have the full trailer here tomorrow as soon as it’s released, so be sure to stay tuned.
