Annabelle: Creation is the worst movie of all time (though it was extremely scary)

I am not sure where we are in the Conjuring series here. I think this is the second prequel, fourth movie overall. The first one was impressively scary, the other two meh, and this one, while scary as shit, was not what I would call a good movie. It was only like two days ago that I saw this, yet I can't tell you much of what happened. This is the archetypal "cheap thrill". Crappy story but the director does a phenomenal job of scaring the piss out of me.

This movie starts out with a youngish family, a dad who makes dolls and a mom who is there, who have this playful little girl that dies when she is hit by a truck on a dirt road. From there we cut to 12 years in the future. The couple, the mom now crippled and the dad a broken shell of a man, now opens up their home to a nun and a group of orphans to "make amends". Of the orphans, there are six(ish) of them, only two of them are really important: the one with polio and little one. Things are pretty much immediately fucked but the horror ramps up when polio goes into the dead girl's room and finds the possessed doll, Annabelle. From there things escalate, leading to smoke monsters, demon dolls, possession, telekinetic disembowelment, nun flinging, scarecrow inhabitancy, so forth, which ultimately takes us to the start of the first Annabelle movie, the second in The Conjuring series.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: Annabelle: Creation adds another strong chapter to the Conjuring franchise - and offers further proof that freaky-looking dolls remain reliably terrifying.

Pros: Super creepy, unsettling atmosphere. Decent intro. Really good combo of slow burn and jump scares.

Cons: Plot is forgettable. Feels a lot longer than it was (never a good sign). Run of the mill demon flick that doesn't offer anything new.

Just making some dolls

Notes:  The opening is Lynchian. We get the dad, Anthony LaPaglia whose biggest role is likely Jack Malone in Without a Trace, putting the finishing touches on the creepy-ass Annabelle doll. This is number 1 of 100. He is getting these little notes that say shit like "come find me" and what not. Eventually see they are being left by his daughter. Normal family from the 1940s or 50s or whenever this is from. Mom is Miranda Otto whom you may remember from The Lord of the Rings as Eowyn. She is barely on screen and her face is covered for a lot of it (later see it was an Annabelle mishap) but she is fine looking here. They go to church and we see some toy store owner that is like, "hey, do you have any more of those disturbing looking dolls (even though that one you made obviously said 1 of 100)? The kids just love those things!!!" Anyway, they get on the road and get a flat. While they are there on the side of the road, the little girl is hit by a truck and killed.

Next thing we see is a group of orphans getting off a bus with a nun and a priest (who does not stay with the ladies at the house). This is 12 years later. Really pull at the old heart strings. Give one of the orphans polio. Her name is Janice. The rest of the girls mistreat her, sort of. The early story focuses on her and her little buddy, Linda, who just want to get adopted. Fuck. Well, that first night Janice goes into the forbidden room and lets out the demon doll. Shit. The next day she goes to confessional and admits that she went to demon doll room. The nun gives her a bunch of shit for this, is like "you are going to get us kicked out of here and then you'll never get adopted." Ouch. Come to think of it, it's pretty inconsiderate having all these children into your home along with all these devil dolls hidden about the house. But Janice, we see, is weird so whatever. She steals the dead girl's picture off the wall which was bizarre. Why would anyone want that?

Several times throughout the movie Janice screams bloody murder just feet away from her sleeping housemates and no one wakes up. Around here we get the obligatory "I'll steal your soul!" line, which (SPOILER FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH HERE) it does, eventually. She gets super creepy here. Her and the doll are inseparable. Linda takes the doll and throws it down a well which doesn't phase it. They need to fucking cunt punt the shit out of that fucking thing. They ultimately determine that it is too late for Janice and lock her possessed ass in the demon room with the doll. This is after all the demon murder and carnage, of course. When they all run out of the house, I thought for sure that the house was going to implode, Poltergeist style. When the police and such come to the home at the end of the movie, Janice is gone. That's weird everyone collectively says, but they are not very concerned. Should have been though as we see the girl getting adopted by the family that gets killed at the beginning of Annabelle. The flick then segues into that piece of shit movie. Roll credits.

The scariest parts of the film was probably the tea party scene when the mom character walks in on her dead daughter playing with the Annabelle doll. The mom has her cross out while the daughter is facing the opposite direction. As she steps closer, the daughter levitates and bones crack and break in disgusting jerking motions. The girl is possessed as fuck, coming at the mom all quick and unnaturally. It's disturbing. The most (maybe) unintentionally hilarious part of the movie, there are several of these moments, comes at the end after the priest comes back to the house to check everything out. He carrying Annabelle, is all, "the doll was possessed but isn't now." He then plops the doll down in front of the girls and is like "which one of you gets it?" Yeah, pretty sure a half hour is a little too soon to make jokes, if that is what it was.

Ultimately the thing I didn't like about the movie was how unbelievable it was. Part of the appeal of The Conjuring was that this was based on a "true" story and it felt real with some embellishments. The thing that sucked about that first Annabelle movie was that is was just a bunch of made up nonsense about where the doll came from that had no basis in reality. Basically, it was over-the-top absurd. This one doesn't go quite that far, but on the whole the plot is pretty ludicrous, though I'd put it second of the four on the most believable list, including The Conjuring 2 which was supposed based in reality as well.

Alien: Covenant is the greatest movie of all time

Aw shit. Covenant is easily the scariest installment of the series since Alien. It was fucking tense, yo. It's no Alien or Aliens but it's really, really good. Like any good horror movie I was pretty uncomfortable at times. But what makes it dope is how much it has stuck with me and made me think about it. The ending is totally something you see coming from a mile away, but then you don't, but then you do, so forth. Like most the movie, it’s predictable, but not. Sure it’s more people going to a planet and getting themselves picked off, but it is also the origin of an old testament god. Here be massive spoilers. 

Pros: Casting was flawless. Fassbender is amazing. Lots of beautiful people including the chick that is in all Ti West's movies. Has made me think more than any other movie in recent memory. 

Cons: Total bummer of a movie. Couple of cliches. Some unreasonable idiocy. Not much in the way of character development with a few exceptions. 

Disclaimer: There are massive spoilers below.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn't take the saga in any new directions.

Notes: First off, it is good to know in 100 years people still know John Denver songs and use GoPro 3s. Siri, by that point, is also pretty advanced. As we see in the opening scene, the droid from Prometheus, David, Michael Fassbender, comes online in an Adam meeting god moment. Except the god here is Guy Pierce, founder of the Weyland Corporation. They talk about how he created David and what not and David is all like, “isn’t it weird you are going to die and I will live forever.” Guy Pierce is like, “get my tea, bitch.” Implications here are clear. Essentially: “you are here serve me. I made you for this purpose.” But David has ambition. 

Basically, David is the secrete protagonist of Prometheus. If you think you understood Prometheus, well we think that shit. In retrospect, that movie is bleak as fuck. In Covenant, we are seeing the origin of a godlike power. And he is a vengeful god. He'd rather make his own life rather than play with what’s already around. He is on some next level shit. That is Covenant's big mistake. Not recognizing that his ambitions are godly. He is the robot version of Kurt Russell in Guardians Vol 2. My favorite part in Prometheus was when David met the space jockey and spoke to him in his native tongue, the space jockey is then like, “aw” and pats his head but then totally just rips it off. It was fucking hilarious. David, however, did not think that shit funny. He is basically above all this shit. He obviously had no respect for his creator and by extension humanity. Now, moving on to mankind’s creator, no respect for them either. So now when he goes with Elizabeth Shaw, who he kills and experiments on after she put him back together, to the planet inhabited by the architects and literally reigns shit down, their own bioweapon, on top of them, killing all nonbotanical life on the planet.

During his alone time on the architect planet, David keeps busy by cultivating facehuggers which he finally gets to use on Dr. Manhattan to make the first xenomorph. That scene is fucked. Right before we have this Neomorph, the product of the bioweapon alone, which is now airborne, infecting a host. It has killed at least a couple of people at this point but David talks to it and sort of calms it’s murderous rage for a moment. At that time the guy who played Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen shows up and mows the thing down. David is PISSED. “He trusted me!” he screams. Dr. Manhattan is all, “I need to know what the fuck is going on.” David is like, “well alrighty then.” Takes him to see the pods. One opens up. David is like, “don’t worry, it won’t hurt you,” and he is looking down into it and of course the facehugger is swirling around. All 10 or so people in the matinee showing I was at were like, “you fucking idiot!” We know what comes next, you see. And it does. Dr. Manhattan is passed out with a chestburster ready to go. David wakes him by chucking rocks at his face. He wakes. David acts like a dick and then we get the first xenomorph. It’s cheesy as fuck with David teaching it to raise it’s arms like an asshole. If I know one thing about xenomorphs, it is that they are not trainable.

The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is all over the place with these robots. Covenant has it’s own iteration of the David robot, this one named Walter. He is also played by Fassbender, who I stress was fucking amazing in these roles. Walter is the less insane, more predictable model. He is stronger and less murderous as he does not have the ability to create. It's like if every other generation of iPhone were pure evil. Except instead of spamming your contacts, it kills everyone on the planet and tortures you to death for fun. That too is my idea of a good time. Me and David should party. I could teach him about Shelley (I was a Romantic poetry scholar in a past life). He could teach me about the flute. We can listen to Wagner together. Good times. Won't let him pour my drink though. 

Anyway, David sees Walter as a brother that too lets him down. When they get together we get some Fassbender on Fassbender action. They kiss, which was weird, and David teaches Walter to play the flute, saying something like “you blow and I’ll do the fingering,” which was hilarious. But they end up fighting over David’s desire to “kill all humans” Bender style. It should be no contest, Walter is the updated model after all, but they are basically even, to my annoyance, which causes shit to get complicated at the end. 

Katherine Waterston, the survivor girl whose recent credits include the Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice (where she is blonde and tan) and that Harry Potter prequel, is a pretty lady that they make look as much like Ripley as they can. Actually everyone in the movie is flawless looking with the exception of maybe Danny McBride, but even he isn’t normal person hideous or anything. She is solid and the first half of the movie more or less follows her.

I’d say McBride sort of steals the show but with Fassbender that is not possible. When I saw him and James Franco were in it, Franco for all of like 10 seconds, I thought it might turn out to be a hilarious comedy which did not happen and McBride does a fucking great job. I was legitimately moved by his character which is crazy pants. 

Other than that, you don't really see them develop any of the characters. They're just red shirts. We see them long enough to learn one cliché about them and then they're dead. Some of those death scenes are fucking spectacular though. The best of the bunch is the shower death scene. It was fucking sick. 

Potentially hilarious?

All in all, great fucking movie. It’s so good it’s been hard to watch anything else. They totally shit on the Alien vs. Predator universe, which thank fuck, the xenomorphs and their precursors look fucking dope, good kills, gets you thinking, performances are amazing. This is a must own for me.