All the things that should happen when you have a doll like that in the house do happen- strange sounds emanate, doors close on their own, sewing machines operate automatically. All that might give a momentary scare but on the whole it doesn’t engross you.

A lame backstory to The Conjuring…

…in comparison to The Conjuring — with its fantastic cast of actors and its sub-text of research and years of pain — Annabelle pales.

A none-too-exciting prequel to last year’s overrated The Conjuring, Annabelle plunders elements from its genre predecessors including the Child’s Play series featuring that demonic doll.

Annabelle is not terrible, but it’s not very good either. The premise is flimsy and the leads are tolerable, but the film never manages to rise above mediocrity. There isn’t much suspense and the scares are minimal.

All in all, it could have been a decent but unremarkable prequel. Instead it ends up being mostly worthless.

Annabelle isn’t perfect – hell, it isn’t even as good as The Conjuring – but despite its unconvincing climax, it’s got moments of spine-tingling horror that do the trick.

Manages to overcome weak writing and every single horror film cliche created by mankind by delivering a few unexpected scares. Go for it, if that’s exactly what you’re looking for.

Coming from the very people who gave us The Conjuring, Annabelle moves slower than a snail trying to book a ticket on the IRCTC website.

If you’re looking for a scare, look into your 8th grade math textbooks. All that the theatre can offer you in this case is a deep, dreamless sleep.

s. Some of the scenes might give the faint-hearted sleepless nights. But, if you are genuinely willing to get scared, you can give Annabelle a miss.

Annabelle alights on most horror tropes but comes across as a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Still, it will give you your money’s worth, while not really serving you anything too memorable (or scary) as some of the other, more sinister horror films we’ve seen in the last few years.