If there’s one thing that remains true about the box-office, year after year, it’s that horror films are a sure bet. Whether it’s a part of a long running franchise, or a wacky off-kilter comedy, audiences seem more than willing to investigate the horrific on screen. This week, one horror film bows out of cinemas as another enters. While both centre on a dependable subject for cinematic hauntings – headstrong teenagers – the results could not be any more dissimilar.
The recently opened “Annabelle Comes Home” is the seventh, and latest, entry in the Conjuring Universe and a more direct sequel to the two previous Annabelle films. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as real-life demonologists (or hucksters, depending on which version of events you believe) Ed and Lorraine Warren and the film opens with their early encounter with the malevolent Annabelle doll, whose evil is confined in their room of horrors within a glass case. But, of course, this confinement is only temporary. When the pair invite teenager Mary Ellen to babysit their pensive daughter as they head off on another case, Annabelle becomes key to a haunted house film centring on Mary Ellen, her impulsive friend Daniela and unwitting love-interest Bob.
The concept sounds like a familiar hook for many a horror story but “Annabelle Comes Home” confounds in the way its interests seem to lie beyond scaring the audience. The best parts of the Conjuring franchise have always been the believable chemistry between Farmiga and Wilson and the charm of their folksy rapport as the Warrens. They only appear briefly here, bookending the film, the centre of which cedes importance to the teens and the preteen Judy Warren. It’s almost an hour in before first-time director Gary Dauberman delivers any explicit intentions to shock or scare us, and it’s because the film is more earnest and explicit in its interest in tracing the coming-of-age of Judy Warren.
Judy is unnerved by the doubting articles about her parents, and by the ostracism she faces from her schoolmates, who seem more repelled by her dourness than her parents’ work. And, so the film traces Judy coming to grips with her own strangeness as she bonds with the two older teenagers, Mary Ellen and Daniela. The film justifies the bizarre mistakes these characters must make to allow the evil to surface in the Warren house but this is grounded by the subplot of Daniela’s grief for her recently dead father. It grounds the entire film, then, not in ghostly antics that take up the middle section but rather in something much more sedate. At the end, when the mischief is managed, the film turns away from the horrors with nary a backward glance as if emphasising what we had already suspected.
In “Annabelle Comes Home” (the title never holds up, as Annabelle never feels truly central), terrorising teens is more means to an end than the main course.
The same cannot be said for “Ma.” In the Octavia Spencer “psychological horror,” terrorising teens is the appetiser, main course and desert. Tate Taylor bills his film as a psychological horror but the term feels laughably inappropriate for a film where none of the characters display anything resembling psychologically realistic behaviour. If you’ve seen the trailer for the film, you’re all caught up. New-girl-in-town Maggie falls in love with the wrong crowd and is cajoled into asking random people outside of the store to buy some alcohol for her and her friends. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Sue Ann Ellington takes pity on them. But she’d feel better if they came to drank in her basement rather than drive around. For their own safety.
The foolish group think this is normal behaviour and soon Sue Ann’s place becomes the hangout spot, until things spiral out of control and her true intentions surface. Sue Ann’s terrible high school experience leaves her doomed to repeat her unsatisfying youth with these witless teenagers. There are a lot more plot points within that, but the plot-heavy inexplicability of “Ma” needs to be seen to be appreciated.
“Ma” is not good but it did keep me laughing throughout its mercifully brief run-time, not because of sincere attempt at humour but more because I could not process the unfathomable ridiculousness of the events in any way but by wheezing laughter throughout each new plot development. “Ma” is only more interesting when considered as a project for those involved. The film is a reunion for Octavia Spencer and her director from “The Help”, the film which netted her an Oscar. The film even features “The Help” alumni Alison Janney in a thankless role to remind us of their history. In theory, Spencer’s attraction to the idea of the project make sense. “Ma” has potential to use race and gender in intriguing ways to create an uncomfortable assessment of small-town foibles, but in execution it is so ham-fisted in its ineptitude it turns into a game deciding which character’s trust of Sue Ann feels most unbelievable.
By the end of the film, “Ma” does make good on the terrorising teens promise. It is never truly scary, but it is perverse and uncomfortable in a way that sears into your brain. On the heels of the bizarre machinations at work in “Ma,” “Annabelle” cannot help but immediately come across as more impressive. First time director Dauberman is quite clear about what he wants to establish with the sombre film, which despite being quite open about its scares is more clearly a tale about a family and their strange relationships. There’s little that happens in “Annabelle Comes Home” but it’s a satisfying tale and at the end we even register emotional interest in its characters. The same cannot be said for the tonally erratic and unsatisfying “Ma.” It’s hard to root for the psychotic “Ma” but it’s even harder to root for the teens she terrorises. So, you might find yourself rooting against them all – cast, director and production team.
“Annabelle Comes Home” and “Ma” are currently playing at Caribbean Cinemas and MovieTowne.
