Annabelle: Creation
Anthony Paglia and Miranda Otto are Samuel and Esther Mullins, the devoted parents to a young daughter, Bee (Samara Lee), but their world is shattered when Bee dies in a tragic accident. Some years later, Samuel and Esther open their house to girls from a closed orphanage and a nun who looks after them. The young girls soon become the target of what seems to be a possessed doll called Annabelle.
This follow up to 2014’s Annabelle is actually a prequel rather than a sequel. I found the setting and set up of the original film to be pretty interesting but the demonic doll elements fairly risible, and it relied far too heavily on jump scares. Here, director David F. Sandberg and writer Gary Dauberman do not rely quite so heavily on those cheap tactics, particularly to start with. There is a nice slow build up and it is genuinely creepy in the first half. However, things start to badly wrong as the film progresses. Bearing in mind their situation, it beggars belief the Mullins would allow so many vulnerable children into their house. Their way of dealing with the doll when they first found out about does not make much sense and as the demon begins to terrorise the people in the house, the importance and relevance of the doll becomes very confused.
The ending is also a bit of a damp squib, with a fairly obvious tie-in to the previous film shown in a short epilogue.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Overdrive
In the South of France, two brothers, Andrew and Garrett Foster (Scott Eastwood and Freddie Thorp) operate as car thieves. They unknowingly try to steal a car from a sadistic local crime boss and have to agree to do a job for him.
This is an extremely formulaic film, with predictable and dull car chases, crosses and double crosses, some pretty feeble quips from the ‘heroes’ and a final twist that does not really hold up. Eastwood looks a lot like his Dad and he is cast as the strong and silent type, but he totally lacks his father’s charisma. Thorp is little more than annoying and Andrew’s love interest, Stephanie, played by Ana de Armas keeps saying that she should be included in the scam they are running but becomes little more than a damsel in distress. Even bearing in mind her badly written character, Armas’ performance is awful.
The location work in and around Marseilles is pleasing on the eye, and the sight of some vintage cars racing through the twisty mountain roads will please many people. However, Michael Brandt’s and Derek Haas’ screenplay is very poor and Antonio Negret’s direction can kindly be described as workmanlike.
Rating: 4 out of 10