The Halloween List: Killer Dolls! Annabelle: Creation and The Cult of Chucky

Annabelle: Creation (2017)

A serious step up from the first Annabelle, and a film that generally feels closer to the universe of The Conjuring. This is a prequel explaining the tragedy in a doll maker’s family that led to the creation of the eponymous toy, and why it was possessed. After the loss of their daughter, the family opens their house as an orphanage, and we follow Janice, a disabled girl who keeps finding clues that something is amiss in their house.

One of the biggest differences between the first and Creation is that so much more happens in this movie. Both the exploration of the house and creepy events fill much more of the film, giving the kids and their loyal nun attendant agency and investment. It also holds just enough back, such as the creepy well in the back of the property, which merely has to exist in the background of a few scenes and leave you waiting for something awful to come out of it.

Eleven Horror Stories with Happy Endings (Obviously, SPOILERS)

The other night, a friend of mine said I should've expected SOMA ending grimly because "it's Horror." It bugs me when people talk like that, because Horror doesn't have to end badly. It's actually dangerous to the genre if the endings are predictable. That's why the best Twilight Zone episodes challenge our expectations.

I've written before about not particularly liking either Happy or Sad endings. Sometimes an ending fits a particular story, and often Happiness is a surprisingly good fit for Horror. They're natural compliments to each other: go through the tumult of a scary story for the relief of an ending. It reminds me of Jack McDevitt once yelling at a WorldCon, "I'm not reading five hundred pages just to read the hero died at the end!"

Yet I love Horror, which feels more inclined every decade to end with everyone dead, or at best, doomed. So join me for a few scary movies that end well for the heroes. Maybe we'll learn something.

I'll even start with the most obvious entry so that if you've clicked here by accident, you'll only have the end of a hundred-year-old novel spoiled.

1. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)

Not Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, which has a runtime more decadent than its costume design. But the formative vampire story for generations had the good guys triumph. It's an old-fashioned monster story: we find a monster, it scares us, and then we win. Life expectancy was lower in 1897, so endings went easier on us.

But seriously, read that ending. The evil sisters go down, Quincey and Harker shank Dracula, and Mina and Jonathan have a baby and live happily ever after. Stoker originally made their victory so overwhelming that Dracula's own castle died and fell apart.

Ultimately, Stoker decided killing the evil real estate was too much.

True Stories of John: The Devil Interrupts a Horror Movie

College felt like this to me, too.

So on Sunday my mother asked to go see The Conjuring. Apparently both the Catholic Church and CNBC had endorsed the movie, and they're who she listens to for Horror movie picks. I jump at the chance to watch any Horror movie with my mother because she is the only person I've ever seen jump out of a chair in fright (thank you, Wait Until Dark). I chose wisely because, recent viewings of Lawrence of Arabia and Pacific Rim notwithstanding, I had the most amazing cinema experience in years.

The Conjuring is an exoricism movie full of exorcisim movie tropes. Things are moving, the kids are hearing and smelling things, and the family finds a basement they didn't know was there even though it houses their boiler. Sure, whatever, why was it amazing?

So in the middle of one night scene, one of the daughters is woken by an invisible force tugging on her leg. Even though the weather is clear through her windows, I can make out heavy rain in the background. It's odd, eerier than anything the movie is suggesting to the girl as she gradually wakes and realizes this isn't one of her sisters. No one is around, but the presence is still looming over her in the dark. Face contorted in fear, she moves the edge of her mattress and does what only the bravest real kids and all fictional kids do: she looks under her bed.

We get a shot from under the bed, the wall pale against the darkness of the mattress and floor. The girl's head creeps down from above, millimeter by millimeter, and just as we prepare to see her eyes and read her reaction to whatever is under here, the walls of the cinema rumble with thunder and the screen goes blank. The dim lights in the cinema, which we normally tune out, all shut off, and the screen is a natural emptiness, not a projected black. The entire room is cast into darkness, as though the devil had seized our space as well as the girl's, except for one yellow light bulb that flicks on behind us.

The hurtz hum of the speakers has also died, but the sounds of pelting rain continue – from outside the cinema. A thunderstorm had crept up on us during The Conjuring and knocked out the power. I believe I mortified my mother by laughing so hard. It's things like this that make it impossible for me to be a deist. Thanks, exorcism films.

Perhaps the best part was the unease of everyone else in the cinema. They were looking around, murmuring, and for whatever reason I felt the need to editorialize, "It was the weather." Everyone gave off this short, nervous laugh.

After a minute, I ventured into the hallway and got a disgruntled apology from a booth worker who clearly didn't want to have to deal with the generator. And after a few minutes, the house lights returned and the film came back, just seconds away from a cheap jump scare. The movie actually ended very well, having more to do in its exorcism sequence than the traditional "you're tied to a chair, we yell back and forth while things move" routine. I downright admired how the movie juggled so many characters and entities bebopping around its script. But nothing they could have directed would have been as good as a jump scare caused by barometric pressure.