Annabelle

Sometime in the late 1960s, a young couple expecting their first child (Ward Horton, Annabelle Wallis) add a singularly ugly doll to her collection. The doll then promptly becomes possessed by the spirit of the Satan-worshiping daughter of their next-door neighbors, who committed suicide after murdering her parents. Supposedly inspired by a real doll investigated by psychic researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren (who also investigated the Amityville haunting), the script by Gary Dauberman owes more to Rosemary's Baby, The Omen and The Exorcist. Performances are earnestly trite—including Tony Amendola as the usual priest and Alfre Woodard as a bookstore owner interested in the paranormal—while John R. Leonetti's direction is alternately slack and frantic. The result is a few islands of cheap scares in a large ocean of tedium.