A prequel to a poorly-reviewed spin-off about a creepy-looking doll, Annabelle: Creation‘s origins don’t lend a lot of rationale to its existence. But do the Annabelle character’s origins somehow justify this twice-removed project? According to this first trailer for Creation, probably not.
The multi-level derivative film takes its subtitle as literally as it could. In the opening moments of this trailer, we see a doll-maker (Anthony LaPaglia, tellingly) physically fabricating the titular doll. Only later do we see its true origins, though: the doll-maker and his wife (Miranda Otto) had a daughter that died as a child and later, as a spirit, begged to inhabit a little porcelain body. The parents, naturally, accepted this absurd request, so now we have this secondary franchise.
While that could all be functional enough for a cheap horror film, this first trailer for Annabelle: Creation doesn’t exactly sell its pitch. Instead, it goes for the familiar modern horror tropes, giving us a scary doll, nuns, orphans, jump-scares, a girl in a nightgown, and, of course, a spirit that won’t leave a weathered old home—all within two-and-a-half minutes. It feels less like a creation than a continuation of the last two decades of predictable scares.
Annabelle: Creation‘s doll panic will hit us and theaters August 11.
