Watching: ANNABELLE COMES HOME

Year: 2019
Rating: R
The seventh film in the Conjuring franchise features, yet again, everyone's favorite little doll  Annabelle - who, as the film opens, is taken by demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and encased in a locked glass cabinet in their Evil Trinkets Room (my name, not theirs) before she can do any more damage. Annabelle is so evil, in fact, that the case/room have to be blessed first, and even locked up her evil seems to effect the other evil artifacts in the room, as if she feeds them. The locks on the door to the Warren's private souvenir suite are many, and when the Warrens leave on an overnight trip they make sure to engage Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), a babysitter for their 10-year-old daughter whom they already know and trust to steer clear of the chamber of horrors behind that multi-locked door. What they don't count on, however, is Mary Ellen's uber-annoying friend Daniela (Katie Sarife), who's read about the Warren's rep in the newspapers and has her own secret agenda; she wants in that room, and nothing's going to stop her. When she visits Mary Ellen at the Warren's home and manufactures an excuse to get her friend and the little girl out of the house, Daniela finds the keys to the locked hell-room (in a ridiculously easy way, one of a couple of eye-rolls you can expect in this film), and manages to not only unleash Annabelle but a whole truckload of evil  from that room that seems to guarantee no one will make it through the night - which, of course, also sets up the little girl as the primary target (cue horror trope). For scares, Annabelle Comes Home is actually one of the better entries in this particular series (the coin thing even had me creeped out), even dropping in a couple moments of humor to alleviate the supernatural shenanigans. Not awesome, but first-time director Gary Dauberman serves up enough scares to keep you going, even if you do sort of want to smack the crap out of the smug, annoying Daniela through most of the film.  6/10 stars