The writer of Hell or High Water and Sicario, Taylor Sheridan took his turn in the director’s chair in his first big screen film, Wind River, and Sheridan showed that he is one of the hottest creative talents in movies today.

Local hunter/tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), who spends his time searching the woods of Wind River, a Native American reservation in Wyoming, for animals that are killing livestock of the natives.  During one of his hunts, he stumbles across something unexpected.  A body of a local Native American girl, raped, beaten and frozen to death.  FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olson) was sent into the reservation to investigate the crime and the pair team up to try and solve the mystery.

Wind River is a mystery story, but it also is not a mystery story.  What do I mean by that?  Well, the mystery is here, but it is not the center of this movie.  The main driving force of the film is the elements and how Wind River is a perilous place to live.  It is also very much a comment on the lives of the Native American who live in the area.  The mystery is there too, but honestly it is peripheral to the rest of the film.

Jeremy Renner is tremendous in this role, perhaps the best I have seen him.  He was subtle and nuanced as this hunter who is dealing with his own tragic past while trying help solve the case.  Elizabeth Olson is also wonderful in the role as the “fish out of water FBI agent, ” providing layers to her role, despite there not being as much development for her as there was for Renner.  To both of their credits, I never thought of them as Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olson during the film, and, even more impressive, I never thought of them as Hawkeye and Scarlett Witch, either.

However, perhaps the most standout performances were by a couple of Native American actors.  The wonderful Graham Greene played the local sheriff Ben, who was entertaining and funny as he pessimistically quipped about the dower lifestyle with which the people had to deal.  He reminded me very much of Gil Birmingham’s role in Hell or High Water.  And the second top performance was by the aforementioned Gil Birmingham, who played the father of the murdered girl, Martin.  He was amazingly heartbreaking and you could not help but feel the pain that he was dealing with.  He also portrayed the anger perfectly of how society’s actions led to the loss of his daughter.

I was fully engaged and engulfed by the movie for the first two acts of the film.  I have heard some criticism that the early part of the film has pacing issues, but that was not my experience.  I was all in on the film immediately.  However, at the beginning of the third act, there is a flashback scene chronicling what exactly happened to the girl that felt so out of place in the narrative that we had had so far that it was very jarring.  Though well done and traumatic, the flashback took me out of the film.

Yet, immediately after the flashback, we get sucked right back in with one of the most real to life gunfights you will ever see.  It is tense and dramatic and seriously painful to watch, and then the ultimate finale of the film is remarkably satisfying so the beginning of the third act only slightly derailed the film for me and I was right back on board after that.

The scenes between Renner and Birmingham are some of the best scenes of the film, as these two men are able to connect over their common losses and it shines a light of humanity on the horrible situation life has placed them in.

Wind River is a fantastic thriller with top of the line characters that has a voice to say about the treatment of Native Americans.  It does so without being preachy.  It just is.  Renner and Olson are wonderful and Gil Birmingham could be Oscar worthy.  The scenic backdrop of Wind River is a stark reminder of not only the beauty found in nature, but also how unforgiving and deadly nature can be.  Even with the slight hiccup near the beginning of the third act, Wind River delivers big time.

4.85 stars

This one is a tough one.

Please do not go into A Ghost Story expecting a typical horror movie… or a normal haunted house movie.  This is more than that.  It is a challenging, infuriating, frustrating film that you may not understand.  It is also very well done.

A young married couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) are preparing to move from their house, but fate has another idea.  Affleck is killed in a car wreck and he returned as an invisible ghost, covered by a white bed sheet, and he has to watch as his wife continues her life without him.  However, there is more than just that as time starts going all over the place and he starts seeing the history of this house, both from the past and in the future.

David Lowery is the writer/director of A Ghost Story, but I got a distinct feel of David Lynch here.  The long, extended scenes sitting on one subject, the beautiful yet confounding imagery, the use of time as a manner of storytelling all speak of the similarity to Lynch.  We get a good five minute scene of Rooney Mara sitting on the floor and eating a pie.  This is just like a scene that you might get in Twin Peaks.

There is a definite feeling of loss and longing here.  We do not have much dialogue during the film, but the actors do a tremendous job of revealing feeling without speaking.  In fact, the ghost beneath the sheet does more with just some body movements than a lot of actors can do with their entire face and voice.

However, since the scenes can be long and drawn out, I can understand why some people may find A Ghost Story boring.  It is certainly unlike any film of the year.  It asks a lot of the audience, insisting on patience and not necessarily paying off everything, and it was a sad movie, pushing the level of depression hard.

It is beautifully shot despite some of the imagery being extremely troublesome.  It asks the audience to pay attention to the images and to do it without very much dialogue.

It does ask a lot from the audience, but I did feel that the film was worth it by the end of it.  It is a challenge to watch, but it is very emotional and beautiful.  It is not for everyone.

4 stars

The Hitman’s Bodyguard was one of the films that I was looking forward to as I really enjoyed the trailers that they showed for it.  Unfortunately, the film itself was more of a let down than anything else.

In order to free his wife, notable assassin Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) agreed to testify against General Dukhovich (Gary Oldman).  In order to get him to The Hague, Interpol agent Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung) contacted her old flame, bodyguard extraordinaire Michael Bryce, whose reputation had slipped after one of his clients had died, to help get Kincaid to the trial.

The film is basically your typical buddy movie with two characters who hated one another and who begrudgingly learn to respect each other as the movie progresses.  The problem with this is that the movie is painfully predictable.  In fact, five minutes into the movie, you can see what was going to happen.  There were at least two distinct moments in the film where I said to myself, “oh, so this will happen at the end” and both times I called it exactly.

Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds are both remarkably charismatic here but neither of them are actually playing a character.  Truthfully, both are playing the versions of themselves that they show the public.  We’ve seen these versions in multiple movies over the years.  We have also seen both of them better.  Here Jackson and Reynolds and their banter is one of the strongest parts of this movie.  It could still be so much better.

The strongest part of the film, however, was absolutely the scene stealing performance of Salma Hayek, playing Kincaid’s wife, Sonia.  She was a hoot, playing completely against type and bringing to life the most fascinating character in the film.  Now, I don’t think that I would want more from her, because I can see Sonia becoming too annoying if we had more of her, but the part that we got was tremendous.

The action was fine, well shot, but it was also hard to believe.  There were a lot of bullets flying around without there being too many consequences.  That can be some dumb fun if you are willing to suspend the disbelief.

The story is told through flashback, but the scenes given to us in flashback seem to be told from different movies and completely different tones.  In fact, the inconsistent tone was a major issue with The Hitman’s Bodyguard.  It felt like a comedy at times, but the flashbacks felt like it was a satire.  There was the use of the romantic music to highlight the couples on the canvas, but there was also a villain in Gary Oldman who is shown killing a kid (albeit off screen).  The tone varied so badly that you were never quite sure how you were supposed to react.

The dialogue on the whole was pretty lame and there was a lot of it used as expository.   There were some good moments of laughter, but most of the humor was hit-or-miss.  Since Jackson and Reynolds are naturally funny people, you are going to get a lot of humor from them just being themselves.

In the end, The Hitman’s Bodyguard was not a good movie, but it is one that is watchable.  It is a forgettable film that could be considered disposable.  It might not be the worst film to watch but there is little reason to want to do it.  Reynolds and Jackson are fun at times, but you could make a case that they both are better than what we get here.  The tone is all over the place and the humor is off.  I was really excited for this one, but unfortunately, that was too much to hope for.

2.5 stars

Steven Soderbergh, the director of the Oceans 11 franchise is out of retirement with Logan Lucky, a new heist movie that takes place at a NASCAR race.

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) lost his job on construction at the Charlotte Motor Speedway because of a pre existing leg injury, and Jimmy makes a decision.  Approaching his Iraq veteran brother Clyde (Adam Driver), Jimmy comes up with a plan for robbing the track.  Needing help, the brothers approached incarcerated explosive expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) to aid their plan.

The strength of Logan Lucky is the original characters that exist within the film.  The characters are quirky, funny and well developed and that is something that could have been a real drawback with them.  However, these characters were well done and engaging.

Admittedly, Daniel Craig is easily the best character of the film and he steals practically every scene he appears in.  Yet, there were other very solid characters in the movie.  Dwight Yoakum, Katie Holmes, Seth MacFarlane, Charles Halford, Jack Quaid and Sebastian Stan all have quirky characters to play.  Young Farrah Mackenzie does an admirable job as Jimmy’s daughter Sadie.

The story itself is more complex than you think at the start, but it might be too convoluted.  By the end of the movie, they go through all the little bits that needed to happen for the plot to work.  Because of some of that convoluted nature,there are some sections of the film that is a bit dull.  So much so that I was dozing off through the first couple of acts.

Still, there was more enjoyment to be had in Logan Lucky than not.  The lead actors were all great, especially Daniel Craig.  Some have claimed that Lucky Logan is one of the best movies of the summer.  I would not go that far, but it was a good time at the theater.

3.2 stars

Last summer I was able to see two wonderful independent films, Sing Street and Swiss Army Man, that wound up in my top five films of the year.  I was thinking about both of those films while I was watching Brigsby Bear because I had very similar feeling with this movie.  It was tremendous.

I am not sure how to proceed with this review without spoiling the movie and I do believe the fact that I went into the theater with almost no knowledge of what the film was about and I think that really helped with my enjoyment of Brigsby Bear.

James (Kyle Mooney) is the biggest fan of the series Brigsby Bear Adventures, a show that he grew up watching and that helped to form his moral compass.  When his entire world changed and his show went away, he decided to finish the story of Brigsby Bear himself.

Kyle Mooney is amazing as James.  He was one of the most original characters in a movie this year.  His innocence was charming and engaging.  Mark Hammill is his normal awesomeness as James’s father, Ted.  There was also a fun appearance by Greg  Kinnear as Detective Vogel.

There is a twist in the plot that happens early in the movie that really shifts the perception of the movie.  You think you are going to be going in one direction with these characters in this setting and then the rug gets pulled out from underneath James and the audience.  It was unexpected and it became something even more.

It would have been easy for the film to take James in a certain, typical way but the movie avoids the cliches with him.  He is sweet and he develops throughout the story.

There was a feeling of magic in this story.  By the third act of Brigsby Bear, I was fully entwined in the movie and emotionally connected to the characters.  There is so much heart in the film and it made me happy.  There were some funny moments too with its clever script.

Just like Sing Street and Swiss Army Man, Brigsby Bear has not found a large nationwide release.  It is difficult to find it in the theaters, but Brigsby Bear is definitely worth the effort.  It is one of my favorite movies of the year and is perhaps the most charming one of the year.

5 stars

I was excited about this film.  The Bruce Timm style animation of the film similar to the classic Batman: The Animated Series and the return of the great Kevin Conroy made this animated special Fathom showing something that I especially wanted to see.

I turned out to be disappointed with this one.

The film started out with an opening credits scene that was really campy and I immediately paused.  I had not expected the tone that this movie was taking, but I was ready to give it a chance.  I like the humor and there are some very funny moments in the movie as well.  The juxtaposing of the wild and campy Harley Quinn (Melissa Rauch) with the stoic and hard-nosed Batman really works at times.

You knew this was going to be a different movie when Harley Quinn and Nightwing have sex.  Yes, that is what I said.

Poison Ivy (Paget Brewster) and The Floronic Man (Kevin Michael Richardson) have a master plan to turn everyone in the world into a plant-like creature using the formula created by Dr. Alec Holland (who becomes the Swamp Thing in DC Comics).  Batman and Nightwing are trying to prevent this and recruit Ivy’s B.F.F. Harley Quinn, who has been released from Arkham and has gone straight.

Batman does not trust Harley, but goes along despite his better instincts.

I was into the tone for a good portion of the film.  It was very unexpected because the tone of the Batman: The Animated Series was usually very serious and, even when something humorous happened, the serious tone was maintained.  Still, I remembered the episode when Harley and Ivy initially got together and it was pretty funny.  I like the laughs and the campy feel worked for part of the movie.  There is a scene at a henchman nightclub that is a hoot.  We also see Harley Quinn singing. There is also a very strong scene after a building gets burned down.  You get to see the Harley Quinn humanity during this scene and it gives you a different look at the character.

And then the film goes off the rails hard.

The third act of this movie is just tremendously terrible.  It took what was going to be a surprising and unexpected tonal film that I liked into a film that just does not work.  Moment after moment in this final set pushed believability to the breaking point.  This film has the final confrontation between Harley and Ivy that is so disappointing and cheesy, the arrival of a deus ex machina that actually turns out to be a complete waste of time, and an anticlimactic resolution that is downright stupid.

Batman and Harley Quinn was working for me for the first part of the film, as the campy factor was not too out of line, there were some legit funny moments, Harley Quinn was fun and it felt like they were building to a more serious conclusion after the dramatic scene with Harley after the fire, but the film completely spiraled into ridiculousness and lost me in the third act.  As good as it was to hear Kevin Conroy back as the voice of Batman (and Melissa Rauch of the Big Bang Theory was a solid Harley Quinn), the entire package just was not worth the build.  I left the theater feeling that this would have been better had it been Batman ’66 and we could just make the whole movie a joke.

2.6 stars

A raunchy comedy with nuns.

As with most raunchy comedies, if it is funny, other issues can be forgiven.  The Little Hours is funny.

Massetto (Dave Franco), a young servant fleeing from his master (Nick Offerman) whose wife he had an affair with, comes across Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly), who is drunk and has lost his cart full of goods into a small river.  Massetto aids the drunken priest and Father Tommasso offers the boy a place to stay at his convent.

Problem though.  The nuns at this convent are not the regular version.  They are violent, attacking the previous handyman for talking to them.  So, to protect him, Father decided for Massetto to pretend to be a deaf mute.

The three main nuns, Sister Alessandra (Alison Brie), Sister Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza) and Sister Ginerva (Kate Micucci), meet Massetto and he sends their libidos into the atmosphere.

This film is a satire on the church and the manner of male-female sexual relationships.  It does not take the group long to be succumbing to their lust.  Because it is a satire, these characters are not remarkably deep, focusing mostly on the archetype more than anything else.

Once heading down the path of revelry, the nuns cannot be stopped.  There is a scene with witches that is extremely funny and downright shocking.

The actresses are funny in their naughty behavior and Dave Franco is imminently likable as the young Massetto who feels like he is being taken advantage of by all of the characters in the film.

John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon (who plays the head nun Sister Marea) are very good in the movie, and they have some very sweet scenes together.  Their relationship seems to come out nowhere, though.  Fred Armisen comes in later in the film as Bishop Bartolomeo and delivers some funny scenes.

The nuns though go way over the top.  I will tell you that the humor is not “rolling on the floor” laughter, but there are consistent laughs throughout.

There may be some who are offended by the use of the church setting to tell this raunchy satire, but it makes sense when you are dealing with isolated, horny individuals.  It was a decent film.

3.2 stars

The Glass Castle is an uneven movie and I am not sure how I feel about it.  Based on the memoir of the same name by Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle tells the story of Jeannette’s childhood with her family, squatting in abandoned houses, running from the law and dealing with an alcoholic father.

The film, told by switching between Jeannette’s childhood and adulthood in flashbacks, presents us with an uncertain message, mainly about the father, Rex (Woody Harrelson).

Rex is a remarkably complex character, played brilliantly by Woody Harrelson, but the film has a mixed message about him.  They want you to both see how violent and abusive he could be while drinking, yet it shows you how quirky and imaginative he is at other times.  And while that is how you develop a very solid character, it seems like the film wants to excuse a lot of his behavior.  Honestly, I did not want to excuse any of it, considering how he acted.

Some of the best scenes of the movie came in the flashbacks between Harrelson and young Jeannette, played by Ella Anderson.  Anderson is the strongest child actor in a very solid group from this movie, and she has a lot of the heavy lifting involved in presenting this back story.  She has the heart of these scenes, including the strength she showed with her brother and two sisters.

Unfortunately, Brie Larson is not given the same amount of heart in the present day scenes, as she is written stoic and withdrawn.  She is engaged to David (Max Greenfield) who is given so little development that he comes off as a cliche of a rich investment banker.  There is also no real reason given for Jeannette to be this manner.  One would think it had to do with her childhood, but there is a scene of her with Harrelson when she was in college that seemed to change the dynamic between them, making the present day behavior all the more suspect.

Rex is both a terrible father and a wonderful father, and you see the background in which he was raised (with some horrible implications directed toward his mother) so you could almost accept the uncertainty with which the film pictures him, but Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary (Naomi Watts), is a different animal.  Rose Mary is an artist who seems to care only about her art.  She is selfish, full of excuses and lacks emotional strength.  In fact, one could argue that she wants to be in this type of a relationship.  There is a pretty brutal and abusive scene between Rex and Rose Mary in a flashback that showed the type of co-dependent relationship these two characters had.

And none of that was a healthy situation for four kids.  Despite growing up in at worse an abusive home and at best a non-conformist home where they were not the most important part of their parents lives, the kids seem unaffected in the long run.  Yet, in the end, the kids seem to forget all the negative aspects of their childhood, only remembering the happy times.  Either they are extremely healthy mentally or in complete denial.

The movie is simply too long, and because of that, it gets dull at times and repetitive at others.  You needed to shave about 20 minutes off of the run time, and I think you could do that by limiting the present day scenes, which did not feel necessary for the narrative.

Woody Harrelson is great here, and the child actor’s are all really good as well.  Naomi Watts is wasted as this shadow of a character and Brie Larson is not given the sufficient material for her skill.  Still, there are parts of The Glass Castle that are good, and the real pictures and home videos that play in the credits really bring you back into the minds of these kids who lived through what had to be a dark childhood.  Too bad the film wanted too much to put a happy ribbon on it.

2.9 stars

The third of the Netflix movies that I wanted to watch was called To the Bone, and it was a tough one.

Lily Collins played Ellen, a young artist who is struggling with an eating disorder after a life of complications.  Ellen finds her way to a doctor (Keanu Reeves) whose methods are somewhat unconventional.  He admits her to his treatment facility, where she meets a group of others struggling with food.

Right off the bat, there are some imagery in this movie that is difficult to see.  Lily Collins is a tremendously beautiful girl who looks horrible.  At one point, her mother says that she “looks like a ghost” and that simile is an apt description.  I certainly hope that Lily did not starve herself for the role and that the images of her thinness was some sort of special effect.

The film is as much a character study of a young girl struggling with the difficulties of life as it is a picture about a disease, which is why To the Bone is as effective as it is.  Ellen (or Eli as she comes to be known) is a fully fleshed out character and her interactions with the other characters make you care even more for her.  The film also slowly dishes out the facts of her life that has led her to such a troublesome point, on the verge of her body shutting down.

At the treatment center, Eli meets Luke (Alex Sharp).  Luke is one of the most original and likeable characters you are going to find.  Every moment he was on screen was like a light through the troubles.  Now, the relationship with Eli and Luke might have been a little too quick, but the connection was definitely felt.  Alex Sharp was great as the always positive Luke.

Keanu Reeves was solid as Dr. Beckham, but he was not the star of the show.

To the Bone was a tough film to watch, but it is an important one to help understand something that, as a heavy individual, I find hard to comprehend.  Refusing to eat is something I cannot relate to, but I can relate to these characters and their troubles and, because of that, I can understand why they took the steps that they took.  This movie may not be for everyone, but it was powerful.

3.8 stars

The second of the Netflix films that I wanted to get to was Message from the King, starring Chadwick Boseman.  I’m not sure what I was expecting from this one, but what I got was a film that started as a type of a mystery, but evolved quickly into a dark tale of revenge.

Jacob King (Chadwick Boseman) arrived in Los Angeles from South Africa in search of his sister Bianca (Sibongile Mlambo), who had disappeared inside the city’s sleazy sections.  Jacob’s investigation quickly led him to discover that his sister had become deeply involved in the corrupt life of LA.

Jacob starts off as a seemingly innocent character.  Someone who has arrived in LA with eyes wide open, just hoping to find the loving sister that he remembered as a youth in South Africa.  However, we discover that Jacob is anything but the innocent naive man we thought he was.  In fact, he becomes as brutal as the world around him.  The film plays with the questions about Jacob and why he was as capable as he was right up until the final scene of the movie.

This film was all over the place for much of it.  It made you think it was going to be one way, but then pivoted away into another.  The inconsistencies messed with a plot that was fairly straightforward and typical.

What elevated this material was Chadwick Boseman.  The star of the upcoming Black Panther film showed that he was ready to lead a huge action flick with his efforts here.  Boseman carried the emotional weight of the story, and the impact of everything that happened is evident on his face.  The coldness is just a cover for a man struggling to do what he needed to do.  Boseman is one of the best young actors around today.

There is a solid cast around him as well.  Luke Evans is here, though his character is fairly one note and his inclusion is confusing.  Even though this, Evans was someone who you loved to hate.  We also had Alfred Molina, who takes a real chance with his performance in Message from the King.

There were some brutal moments in the movie, as it earned its R rating, but I don’t think the film ever really took it too far.  The action was solid, although pretty basic.

The performances were the strength of this film, while most of the rest of it was unremarkable.  This one is a borderline film for me.  If you like a straightforward revenge action flick, you could do worse than Message from the King.

3 stars

There are several NetFlix films now available that I am going to get to tonight or this weekend.  The first one was a film that was recommended by the Schmoes Know Show this past Wednesday in their Indie segment.  It is a film that debuted at Sundance starring former Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams.

Williams plays Jessica James, a struggling playwright in New York City who has just had a break up with the man of her dreams.  In order to try to get on with her life, her friend Tasha (Noël Wells) sets her up with a divorcee, Boone (Chris O’Dowd) and the pair strike up a friendship, bonding over the losses they suffered in love and the connection of truth-telling.

This was a great film.  It was a romantic comedy that was smart, funny and full of heart.  Jessica Williams is the biggest reason behind this because she is just unbelievably charming here.  She absolutely lights up the screen, and she shows off a great range of ability as well. She not only handles the humor as you would expect, but there are some strong scenes with her mother and sister that inform on the character of Jessica James and the feeling of isolation and loneliness that she felt.

There is fantastic chemistry between Williams and Chris O’Dowd as well.  The dialogue between the two of them is just brilliantly written, sharp and witty.  They make you fall in love with them as a couple immediately and in a manner that you really believe.  Jim Strouse was the writer/director of The Incredible Jessica James and he does a wonderful job providing this pairing with amazing words.

The film starts with a really fun dance segment which brings the viewers into the mind of Jessica James immediately.  This intro does as much in the few minutes to let you know who Jessica James is as many movies do in hours of screen time.

The story itself is pretty simple and there is not much by way of plot.  Still, the film does a really good job of providing us with a look into the life of this charmingly fun woman and the rebound relationship that might just turn out to be more than she expected.

It is a short movie, coming in at only 83 minutes, but it was extremely fun and enjoyable and I am glad that it was on Netflix, giving me a chance to see it.  Jessica Williams is the next Daily Show correspondent to hit it big.  She is a star of the near future.

4.5 stars

A horror prequel of a horror prequel.

You don’t see that every day.  What is even rarer is a horror prequel of a really terrible horror prequel tat turns out to be good.

Yet that is what we have with Annabelle: Creation.

The Conjuring was a really enjoyable horror movie, featuring the scary doll Annabelle.  So, of course, sensing the dollars that it could bring, the studio brought us a prequel story of that doll in the film, Annabelle.  And it was terrible.  However, it did make some money and they wanted to continue the Conjuring Cinematic Universe (like everyone is trying to do these days) and so they did another Annabelle film.

This time, though, they gave us a director who had some vision for this film.  David F. Sandberg directed the highly entertaining Lights Out last year, and he brought something special to this film and turned Annabelle: Creation into a very good, scary and engaging time at the theater.

This is an origin story of Annabelle the doll, seeing how she was created and how she came to be possessed by the evil spirits that would cause such trouble.

A group of orphans taught by Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman) arrive by invitation of the Mullins.  The Mullins, Samuel (Anthony LaPaglia) and Esther (Miranda Otto) who had lost their daughter in a tragic accident years before, opened up their homes to these orphans, giving them somewhere to be.  However, it is clear that there is more going on in this house than the children would expect.

Two of the girls, Janice (Talitha Bateman) and Linda (Lulu Wilson), are extremely close, swearing that they would never leave one another and that they would only be adopted together.  Younger than the others, these two are naturally isolated from the group.  Janice begins hearing noises coming from the room that Samuel had told her never to go into, and that leads to trouble.

The relationship between Janice and Linda was at the heart of the movie, and really helped to anchor the audience to these characters.  Janice and Linda do receive some development, and this connection to one another is the strongest aspect of that.  Unfortunately, the rest of the girls are not very well developed.  I also would have liked more development from the Mullins as well.  The beginning of the film presents us with some, but I would have liked more from them.

The strength of the film is the look and the feel of the scares.  The imagery is very scary, and there are some very disturbing flashes in Annabelle: Creation.  I think credit should be given to Sanberg for much of the success of the film.  He builds tension extremely effectively throughout the film, and many of the scares are very original.

Now, I do think he relied too much on jump scares in the movie, and the music cues became irritating at times.  You could usually tell when something scary was going to happen, because, just like in your typical horror movie, the music would go silent, or the sound would begin to grow.  Having said that, there are several instances where the tension is dragged out more than what you expect, so you are building tension waiting for the scare to happen.  There are also a few times when the scare does not happen, keeping you off-balance.

Plotwise there is nothing here that you haven’t seen before.  In fact, you see a ton of the horror tropes scattered throughout.  There were so many of them, I wondered if Sandberg was specifically trying to go down a checklist of the tropes.  There was the car that wouldn’t start, the creepy kids, the priests and nuns, the ghosts in the house, the jump scares, the stupid choices the characters make, the axe, objects tossed around the room, the haunted house, and of course, the creepy doll.

However, despite the overabundance of horror tropes, the film does subvert several of them.  That axe does not lead to a murder.  The film avoids the last one standing trope.  And the film does not deal with the kids trying to convince the adults something weird is going on.

There was only one moment in the film that I really hated.  It was a laughable moment when the ghost of the Mullins girl turned to face Janice.  I won’t tell you what she says or what she looked like, but it almost pulled me from the film.  Fortunately, it came back strong.

It was fun watching Annabelle: Creation because I had a group of younger girls in the theater I was watching this in and they spent much of the film screeching at the scares.  They helped make these moments more effective.

The performances are very solid in the movie.  I wanted to specifically mention Lulu Wilson, who was also in the much better horror prequel Ouija: Origin of Evil.  She is excellent again as she was in that film.  Talitha Bateman was also very good as Janice.  These two worked very well together.  Stephanie Sigman does a great job as Sister Charlotte. She is a charming presence and gave the audience an adult to root for.

This was a very solid horror movie that, while it played with a lot of the tropes, did so in a different way.  The characters that had some focus were very likeable and you could really root for them.  The imagery was very scary and well done, and the film makes Annabelle scary once again after the doll had become more of a joke in the first prequel.  The film also does a great job of tying it back into the other films in the cinematic universe.

If you are a horror fan, you’ll find a lot to like in Annabelle: Creation.

3.6 stars