When James Wan and New Line Cinema debut The Conjuring in the summer of 2013, they fundamentally changed the contemporary landscape of horror filmmaking. The film wasn’t just a swing back towards big-budget, R-rated studio horror, it kicked off one of the highest-grossing horror franchises of all time, introducing audiences to Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Not to mention the terrifying residents of their haunted artifact room, foremost among them, the demonic doll Annabelle.
In Annabelle Comes Home, it all comes full circle. The seventh film in the Conjuring franchise and the third in the Annabelle spinoffs, Annabelle Comes Home moves past the prequel portion of the doll’s terrifying tale, catching up to the moment she went home with the Warrens. And an especially terrifying night when she unleashed the cursed, haunted and possessed contents of the artifact room on their daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace).
With Annabelle Comes Home in theaters on June 26, I recently had the opportunity to drop into the editing room at Warner Bros. Studios to watch a few minutes of footage and chat with writer/director Gary Dauberman. An in-house favorite at New Line, Dauberman's been with the franchise since penning the script for 2014's Annabelle, 2017's Annabelle: Creation, and last year's surprise box office breakout The Nun, yet another arm of the Conuring franchise. With Annabelle Comes Home, Dauberman makes his directorial debut, and with the Warrens, Annabelle, and the entire artifact room, the filmmaker essentially has the keys to the kingdom at his disposal.
And he doesn't plan to waste them. Having fully explored the origins of the titular demonic doll, Dauberman is opting to tie his film into the universe by digging into the mythology of the Warrens themselves, and what it means to be a family when you're locked in a war against the forces of evil. "It definitely ties into the larger continuity," Dauberman explained. "Annabelle: Creation sort of focused on the origin the creation of the doll and in this one I wanted to dig into the Warrens a little bit. It’s nice to see them, just for a minute, not talk about a paranormal investigation or something, just be two people who are married in a relationship. He’s got a terrible sense of direction. Just things like that and have them be for a moment, normal.
We get a glimpse of that normalcy in the first piece of footage he shows us, following Ed and Lorraine from the house where they collected Annabelle to their journey home -- where Ed's terrible sense of direction comes out to play. The scene also shows us how quickly that normalcy can turn into something else when you're dealing with possessed dolls and a medium as powerful as Lorraine Warren, and Dauberman makes fun work of building up the scares between the emotional beats.
"it’s kind of a thematic element throughout the movie because I thought about a lot what it was like for Judy Warren to grow up," Dauberman continued, "to have these two very special people as parents. What that was like and what that pressure must be like? When you’re a kid all you want to do is be like everyone else, and the Warrens are nothing like anybody, they’re so different and unique. So, what that must have been like for her? That’s sort of the mythology I’m digging into in the movie, as opposed to — well, it will be about the doll, but I feel like we’ve told that story… so I want to branch out in different directions. And of course, tell the backstory of different artifacts we’ve seen in other movies."
That's where Annabelle comes into action. When the Warrens leave Judy with her cousin and babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), along with Mary Ellen's more rebellious friend Daniela (Katie Sarife), Annabelle comes out to play. "If the artifact room was like an engine and engines operate on batteries, Annabelle would be the battery that comes in and certain things start to feed off her energy," Dauberman said, "and she starts to manipulate them in order to get through to the girls in the house. She’s kind of like the conductor of the orchestra."
And as fun as the artifacts are, the core of the film is Judy Warren, the daughter of two powerful demonologists, which might not be as awesome as it sounds. Try as they might to give their daughter a normal life. The Warrens incur a certain reputation, and Annabelle picks up with Judy after a recently published article shines a further spotlight on her unique family, isolating her from her schoolmates. In a clip that showed of Mckenna Grace’s easy charm, we saw Judy dealing with the fallout at school, where kids worry about getting “obsessed” if they’re around her. “It’s possessed,” she replies calmly and confidently, if a bit annoyed. It gets worse when her friend tells her she can’t make it to Judy’s birthday party because her parents say she’s not ready to process death. “It’s a birthday party,” Judy replies, a bit sadder this time.
“I really wanted her to first and foremost feel like a kid, be like a kid,” Dauberman said. “The actual Judy Warren came on set and it was great just to talk to her and just find out about her as a person and not just in the context of her parents. I think that’s a tough thing for a kid too if you’re always in the shadow of your parents, what they do or don’t do, it’s kind of always looming over you”
But it’s not all doom and gloom, and you can expect to see some of her parent’s charm and humor come through, even when they’re not around. “The Warrens worked so hard to give her a normal life, and I hope that comes across in the movie,” Dauberman explained. “I wanted her to feel well-rounded. I didn’t want her to just be ‘wow she’s going through so much stress and pressure,’ and all that, I also wanted her to be playful, and be excited that she’s spending the weekend with Mary Ellen and she doesn’t have to think about this stuff right now. Most of all. I wanted her to feel like a kid. Kid’s can sometimes compartmentalize things, and I think Judy’s very good at that in the movie and I think in some ways that’s going to come back to haunt her. Well… fucking literally”
