If you want to hear about all the references Annabelle: Creation has to the director’s
old YouTube videos, then stick around to the end of this video.
Welcome back to Things You Missed.
On the last episode I preached about some things you might have missed in the original
Annabelle -- so today, I’ll be putting together the pieces of the 2017 prequel, Annabelle:
Creation.
This episode is special because this is the first time I’m covering a movie made by
a fellow YouTuber.
This film was directed by David F Sandberg, who goes by Ponysmasher on YouTube.
His most well known video was Lights Out, which got him the job to make the feature
film version; here’s a photo of me being weird at the premiere at VidCon 2016.
The lead actress of this film is Talitha Bateman, who is the brother of Gabriel Bateman from
Lights Out.
Annabelle: Creation opens with a shot of a doll eyeball in Mr. Mullins’s toy shop.
This image foreshadows the fate of his wife, who lost her left eye after being attacked
by the demon and wears a porcelain mask to cover it up.
This sign for Mullins Toy Company describes the figures as handcrafted fine dolls, and
we later see that there are only 100 of them in existence.
This is actually the director’s hand writing the number 1 right here, he explains this
in the behind the scenes videos on his YouTube channel.
But I think this also helps answer a question from the first one, which is why this particular
doll is so rare.
The real life quote-on-quote “haunted” doll described in the Warrens’ case files
is a common Raggedy Ann doll.
The sign also says that this doll is available at Palmeri’s Toy Shop, a reference to the
Palmeri Apartments in the original Annabelle.
We’ve talked about how that original film naturally drew some inspiration from the previous
king of creepy doll movies: Child’s Play -- which I have a whole series of Things You
Missed videos on.
I found the opening of this second Annabelle film to be very reminiscent of the opening
of Child’s Play 2 -- both essentially showing the creation of the doll.
Mr. Mullins’s daughter, Bee, play hide and seek with him, and her hiding spot is behind
the curtain by the window.
After her death, the demon uses her likeness on many occasions, which could explain why
it hides in the same spot in Mia’s apartment in Annabelle, and why it uses the record player
to mess with its victims.
Twelve years after Bee’s death, the Mullinses decide to take in a group of orphan girls
and we meet Linda and Janice on the bus ride over.
Uhh, she does know that that’s not red, right?
The older girls in the front of the bus are reading “Modern Teen” magazine and this
one’s REALLY into it.
They arrive and meet Mr. Mullins, and the front door of the house has both traditional
and inverted crosses, perhaps a clue about the forces of good and evil at play beyond
these doors.
When the girls tour the house, it’s one big long tracking shot -- just like this shot
in The Conjuring -- which this movie is a spin-off of and The Curse of La Llorona, or
as I call it Spanish The Conjuring -- also a part of the series.
In the Behind the Scenes videos, Ponysmasher describes a shot that took 12 takes, and I’m
guessing this is it.
“On Annabelle Creation, I think the most we ever did was 12 takes, but that was for
a long steadycam shot with 8 different actors and it was pretty complicated.”
Mr. Mullins introduces Janice to the chairlift, which is very slow.
I felt like I was waiting for King Zora to get out of the way again.
There’s also a brief moment where Bee’s image can barelyyyy be seen in the background.
During the night, Janice realizes the door to Bee’s room is somehow unlocked, and wanders
in there against Mr. Mullins’s orders, where she discovers that the Annabelle doll is locked
in the closet surrounded by Bible pages.
After the closet door continues to open on it’s own, she throws a blanket over the
doll.
As she continues to explore the room, it comes for her and corners her, but when the blanket
falls away, it’s revealed that there was nothing underneath.
This is a direct reference to David Sandberg’s short film Attic Panic, on the Ponysmasher
YouTube Channel.
Later in the movie, when the teenage girl Carol gets stuck in the barn, there’s another
idea lifted from Attic Panic, which is the lightbulb unscrewing itself.
Considering how many feature films have stolen his concept from Lights Out, I’m glad he
was able to use this stuff from Attic Panic before somebody else did.
He also got the orchestra to include a cover of the simple soundtrack he created for the
short.
This would not be the only reference to his own shorts in the movie.
The Nun who is in charge of all the girls is named Sister Charlotte, and in one scene
she shows Mr. Mullins a photograph of her time in Romania, where he points out an older
Nun in the background that she doesn’t recognize.
This is actually Valak, the Nun demon and the antagonist of The Conjuring 2 and of
course The Nun, which Annabelle: Creation’s post credits scene is a teaser for.
In the scene where the two older girls are gossiping under the sheet and they’re attacked
by something, they end up saying that it looked like Mrs. Mullins, but if you actually pause
on that moment, it doesn’t look like her or her mask, it just appears to be a generic
porcelain mask with dark eyes.
It kind of gives me The Purge vibes.
Maybe this image will be expanded on in another movie.
Janice discovers a picture of Bee in the hallway and brings it into her room to look at it.
When she puts it in a dark spot the eyes give off a demonic glow, and this same effect is
used later on when we see the possessed form of Janice.
This is the same effect that is used throughout Sandberg’s feature film version of Lights
Out on the main antagonist, Diana.
There are a number of visuals that reference Bee.
Bee is a nickname that the Mullins had given their daughter which is short for her full
name: Annabelle.
I think this might be an intentional parallel to the first film where we constantly see
the letter A. In this one, there’s an image of a Bee on the window in her old room, Bees
on the vertical posts holding up the railing alongside the stairs, and when Linda looks
through this kaleidoscope, this is what she sees, which is similar to the stereotypical
Hollywood interpretation of what a Bee’s point of view might look like.
I looked up and they don’t actually see a bunch of repeat images -- that only in the
movies.
Remember that slow chair I mentioned earlier?
You didn’t think that wasn’t going to come back did you?
In fact, I think the scene where the chair gets stuck with Janice on it and the demon
lurking nearby, is another throwback to the original Annabelle, where Mia gets stuck on
the elevator, that won’t go up with the demon lurking about in the storage area.
When we learn the story of how the doll essentially got possessed, it’s also very similar to
what happened to the nurses after the events of Annabelle, with the demon pretending to
be the spirit of a little girl named Annabelle, asking permission to move into the doll and
then causing violent attacks.
The little girl Linda realizes that there is something evil in the doll and tries to
get rid of it by throwing it into the well in the middle of the night and… well…
this happens.
*scream* "No, no!" *scream*
It’s another callback to one of the short films on David’s channel, this one a 2014
flick called Coffer.
Roll it.
So we find out how Mrs. Mullins was injured, by the demon posing as their daughter’s
ghost, but it’s too late, because the demon Malthus gets to both Mr. and Mrs. Mullins,
causing the girls to try to escape the house.
They get into the car, but have some trouble starting it, causing the headlights to blink
on and off, and they notice the scarecrow move between light flashes, which is of course
a callback to Lights Out.
At the end of the day, Sister Charlotte is able to lock the demonically (is that word?)
demonically possessed Janice in the closet, where she disappears through the wall, but
the other girls are safe at least.
They put the doll, which has supposedly been purged of all evil by this dude, in the back
of the police car, which drives away past the grave of Bee, where this all started.
So this goes back to that whole question from the last video -- how did the doll go from
this cop car to John purchasing it and giving to Mia?
The demon Malthus has to have something to do with it.
Our final sequence takes place at St. Joachim Orphanage.
Joachim is a reference not only to one of the great Bulls players of the 2000s but also
a Biblical reference to the father of Mary, which makes sense because of the themes of
their church vs. the evil demons that persist throughout this franchise.
The woman working at the orphanage is Lotta Losten, the wife of David Sandberg; she stars
in…
I think ALL of his short films and cameos in all of his features.
The Higgins family, who you’ll remember from the original Annabelle, come to adopt
Janice, who turns out to be their daughter who comes back to kill them as a sacrifice
for Malthus years later.
When they first meet her, they give her a gift.
It’s an actual Raggedy Ann doll, yet another parallel to the original Annabelle, which
also has this doll featured in it’s epilogue.
If you were to visit the actual Warren museum, this is the doll you’d find in the glass
case.
Annabelle: Creation ends as many Conjurverse movies do with a slow push in on the central
object of this movie, in this case, of course, the Annabelle doll.
So we’ve seen Annabelle’s past, we’ve seen Annabelle’s origin, so join me next
time on Things You Missed to see Annabelle’s future, because we’re going to be covering
the newest film, Annabelle Comes Home.
Remember to subscribe to CZsWorld so you don’t miss it, make sure you ring that deathbell
for notifications and I’ll see you in the next one.
Assuming we both survive.