Films like Annabelle – Dolls are objects that always bring joy to anyone, especially children, every time they play with them. Dolls made cute and attractive with cheerful colors and unique characters from various types of animals or cartoon characters that are sure to liked. However, what happens if the doll is not a cute doll but a scary doll that spreads threats?
Film studios tell horror stories with the main perpetrators being scary dolls who possessed by spirits, spread terror and some even kill people around them. Many doll-themed horror films have succeeded in spreading horror to their audiences.
Annabelle got its own film portion in 2014 with James Wan as producer and John R. Leonnetti as director in this film. This film is the second film in the series The Conjuring Universe. Tells the story of a young couple, Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John Form (Ward Horton) who live in harmony. The young couple felt happiness with Mia’s pregnancy. Mia’s happiness increased when John gave her a gift in the form of a doll. Without realizing it, the terror of the doll was waiting for them.
Annabelle made with a low budget of 6.5 million US dollars, but earned a fantastic income of up to 257 million US dollars. With that amount of income, it not matched by good reviews with only getting a score of 5.4 out of 10 by the IMDb site and only getting a rating of 29% out of 100% by the Rotten Tomatoes site. A prequel to the film Annabelle made in 2017 with the title Annabelle: Creation and tells the origin story of the creation of the demon doll Annabelle.
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Films like Annabelle
1. Child’s Play/Chucky Franchise (1988-2017)
It the most famous doll-themed slasher horror film franchise of the last 30 years. Featuring Chucky as his icon, Chucky is able to convey the horror of a living doll who carries a knife, terrorizes the people around him and kills anyone he wants. The first film released in 1988 entitled Child’s Play received such a good reception that six sequels were made, with the last sequel in 2017 entitled Cult of Chucky.
With the initial story, a murderer named Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) performs a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul into a doll after being shot by a detective named Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon). The Child’s Play story continues to develop in subsequent films, with Chucky’s revenge as the main theme.
2. Magic (1978)
Ventriloquist is the art of performing ventriloquism, with puppets as a performance medium as if the puppets could talk. Without moving our lips, we control our stomach sounds to fill in the sound for a doll until the doll looks alive. This is the basis for making a psychological horror film entitled Magic.
This film released in 1978 and directed by Richard Attenborough. This film stars a young Anthony Hopkins, a veteran actor who was successful in his roles as Hannibal Lecter in the film Silence of the Lambs and as Odin in the film Thor. Tells the story of a failed professional magician named Charles “Corky” Withers (Anthony Hopkins) who must look for new ideas for his next show to save his career. A year into searching for new ideas, Corky returns with a wooden doll named Fats.
With Fats as his partner in the show, playing magic and ventriloquist, Corky became very successful. But on the verge of success, Corky refuses to take the opportunity to become famous because his mental disorder will become known and he doesn’t want other people to know that Fats is controlling him. Fats’ uncontrollability gets worse, leading Corky into a spiral of killings of people around him.
3. Dead Silence (2007)
There is still a connection with ventriloquists, but the film Dead Silence does not tell the story of a ventriloquist artist but rather a young couple who find a package of ventriloquist dummies sent to them without knowing the sender’s address. Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) and Lisa Ashen (Laura Regan) who found a wooden ventriloquist doll without knowing who sent it and only had Jamie written on the package, they decided to keep the doll.
Long story short, Jamie left the house to buy Chinese food, leaving Lisa and the wooden doll behind. Lisa, who then played with the doll, unexpectedly experienced a terrifying terror. When Jamie came home, he shocked to see bloodstains everywhere and heard Lisa screaming from inside the room. Until Jamie found Lisa’s body dead with her tongue missing.
It turns out the wooden ventriloquist dummy they were sent named Billy. Mary Shaw’s cursed doll from Jamie and Lisa’s hometown of Ravens Fair. Jamie, who realized this, finally found out the mystery and his relationship with the cursed doll.
4. Films like Annabelle: The Conjuring (2013)
Apart from Saw and Dead Silence, James Wan kicked off horror cinema again by featuring dolls as a source of fear in his films. Introducing the scary doll who will become an icon in this film, Annabelle. Annabelle successfully displays fear with her brief appearance in the opening film of The Conjuring Universe.
This film about dolls takes place around the 1970s, Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) and their two daughters move to a farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island. It was not peace that this family found in their new home but the spiritual disturbances they felt, especially their two daughters.
Carolyn also contacted a paranormal investigator couple, Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga). Ed and Lorraine also conducted a spiritual investigation in the house. Until it discovered that the house where Carolyn and Roger and their children lived the house left by a witch who committed suicide named Bathsheba. The film The Conjuring received a spectacular response and a sequel to the film The Conjuring 2 (2016) and spin-off films Annabelle (2014) and Annabelle: Creation (2017) and The Nun (2018) were made. In 2020, it is planned that The Conjuring will have a third sequel.
