Annabelle.

I'm not sure if I ever recorded my thoughts on last year's haunted-house movie The Conjuring, but in case I didn't I'll sum it up here: it was half of a good movie.

(The first half, to be precise - the 70s vibe was funky, the haunting was creepy, and the characters weren't horrible. Buuuut then we got old grandma leaping off a wardrobe like Spider-Man and the super casual glossing over of "oh, the original house owner was a witch who KILLED HER BABY FOR SATAN and hung herself" and I was just done.)

In the film, our first introduction to our 'demonologists' is when two 20-something girls are explaining that they are being terrorized by a haunted doll. Apparently someone thought that this was scary enough to warrant its own movie despite the doll not being voiced by Brad Dourif.

Now, like The Conjuring and indeed The Amityville Horror, this movie - Annabelle - is supposedly based on a case investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Ed and Lorraine Warren were, by most accounts, full of shit.  More so than your average ghost hunter, even. Ed has been described as a bully, and was clearly not remotely interested in any serious research - apparently he had a copy of the Simon Necronomicon in his Occult Museum, and would tell people it was one of the oldest and most evil Books of Shadows.

Oh yes, the Occult Museum in The Conjuring is real. And Annabelle the haunted doll lived there! Here she is:

Image source. Oh yeah, baby.

It's a motherfucking Raggedy Anne.

Have you SEEN the doll they're using in the movie?

THAT'S PRE-POSSESSION. While I understand that the idea of Raggedy Anne chasing you down a hallway is pretty goddamn stupid, who in their right mind buys that terrifying piece of shit for his unborn child? If the father of my child walked into the nursery with that thing I'd be like, "fuck, I might be having a moron child because its dad is so stupid..."

Trailer here. Like, really dude? And she keeps the thing. I realise this is set in the 60s or 70s, but no WAY were you high enough to think that monstrosity was appropriate for a newborn.

At any rate, the film will no doubt continue to cast the Warrens as intelligent do-gooders instead of the attention whoring nutbags they were. (Lorraine, let's not forget, went on to appear on Paranormal State as Ryan's mentor. No wonder every case turned demonic.) I'm not going to list the accusations against the Warrens, because other people have done it already! Here a few podcasts which feature some people who are more in the know than I:

Monster Talk - the Warren Omission

Irreligiosophy - Ray Garton Interview.

Seriously, though. Fuck that doll.