Anabelle Comes Home is far from a masterpiece but in many ways, it is the perfect haunted house movie. A bunch of kids are stuck in a big house with a spooky basement full of demonic activity and possessed artifacts. When Daniela heads downstairs looking for a cheap thrill, she makes the mistake of letting out the demon possessing Anabelle, aka the creepiest looking doll we have ever seen.

The movie builds up gradually, starting with footsteps upstairs and objects being moved around. Soon, there are ghostly figures and demonic shadows and the suspense heightens. Daniela’s experience stuck in the basement is a bonafide nightmare and even the most skeptical of skeptics would not wish to be down there with her. With horrifying ghouls roaming the halls, the sense of haunting reaches a whole new level and Judy’s ghosthunting parents aren’t around to help.

What makes the third installment the best in the Anabelle franchise is the characters. Getting a glimpse into the life of Elaine and Ed’s daughter is interesting and her character is compelling. Judy begins experiencing hauntings at the start of the film, which is paired up with her classmates bullying her for her parents’ freaky profession. This has us rooting for Judy early on and desperately hoping that she and her new friends will survive the ordeal.

When it comes to horror films starring kids, it’s important to strike the balance between bravery and childishness. Watching a terrified child run away from monsters is distressing, but watching a child who isn’t scared of anything is unrealistic. Like IT, Anabelle Comes Home strikes the balance between three mini heroes and three scared kids in a haunted house. And this is why we so desperately want them to escape unscathed.

Overall, Anabelle Comes Home is hardly going to win any awards, but after watching intense psychological thrillers like Jordan Peele’s Us and Ari Aster’s Midsommer, a fun and jump-scare-packed haunted house movie is more than welcome.

4/5

The post “Annabelle Comes Home:” The Perfect Haunted House Horror appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The theme that connects all of these grizzly horror films is not ghosts, vampires or demons. No, it’s something that gives many far worse nightmares… a creepy-looking doll. So why exactly are we so frightened of these harmless, (mostly) inanimate objects?

Well, the answer may actually be that we are naturally programmed to fear dolls. Sure, the arrival of Child’s Play in 1989 probably made things worse, but there was actually already a name for people that have an irrational fear of dolls – pediophobia. The uneasiness that people experience around dolls involves a psychological phenomenon known as “the uncanny valley.”

The uncanny valley refers to a category of things which do not comfortably fit in our current psychological schemas. For example, we know that an inflatable giraffe toy is obviously fake. It looks unrealistic and is a source of entertainment. A smiling person, on the other hand, fits into our idea of something which is friendly and safe.

If you take a realistic-looking china doll, however, our experience falls somewhere in between these two states. On one hand, we know rationally that the doll is just a toy. On the other hand, it has an appearance similar to a human and this causes a feeling of uncanniness. To put it more simply, it gives us the creeps.

Essentially, human brains aren’t really equipped to deal with “fake faces”. The more realistic a fake face looks, the more unsettling it becomes. This innate uncomfortableness is then exaggerated by doll horror movies, where the doll comes to life. What is strange is that you may recall a time when you were a young child that one of your biggest fantasies was one of your childhood toys coming to life. One day, almost out of nowhere, this fantasy transformed into a disturbing nightmare.

So yes, the Anabelle franchise uses and abuses jumpscares, Childsplay gets stuck in with the gore and The Boy is an altogether creepy movie. But, these films all lean on a natural uneasiness around dolls which is present within many of us. For psychologists, this revolves around the idea of the “uncanny valley” but for the rest of us, the feeling is best described as “the creeps.”

The post Why are Dolls in Movies so Terrifying? appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Anabelle Comes Home is far from a masterpiece but in many ways, it is the perfect haunted house movie. A bunch of kids are stuck in a big house with a spooky basement full of demonic activity and possessed artifacts. When Daniela heads downstairs looking for a cheap thrill, she makes the mistake of letting out the demon possessing Anabelle, aka the creepiest looking doll we have ever seen.

The movie builds up gradually, starting with footsteps upstairs and objects being moved around. Soon, there are ghostly figures and demonic shadows and the suspense heightens. Daniela’s experience stuck in the basement is a bonafide nightmare and even the most skeptical of skeptics would not wish to be down there with her. With horrifying ghouls roaming the halls, the sense of haunting reaches a whole new level and Judy’s ghosthunting parents aren’t around to help.

What makes the third installment the best in the Anabelle franchise is the characters. Getting a glimpse into the life of Elaine and Ed’s daughter is interesting and her character is compelling. Judy begins experiencing hauntings at the start of the film, which is paired up with her classmates bullying her for her parents’ freaky profession. This has us rooting for Judy early on and desperately hoping that she and her new friends will survive the ordeal.

When it comes to horror films starring kids, it’s important to strike the balance between bravery and childishness. Watching a terrified child run away from monsters is distressing, but watching a child who isn’t scared of anything is unrealistic. Like IT, Anabelle Comes Home strikes the balance between three mini heroes and three scared kids in a haunted house. And this is why we so desperately want them to escape unscathed.

Overall, Anabelle Comes Home is hardly going to win any awards, but after watching intense psychological thrillers like Jordan Peele’s Us and Ari Aster’s Midsommer, a fun and jump-scare-packed haunted house movie is more than welcome.

4/5

The post “Annabelle Comes Home:” The Perfect Haunted House Horror appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The theme that connects all of these grizzly horror films is not ghosts, vampires or demons. No, it’s something that gives many far worse nightmares… a creepy-looking doll. So why exactly are we so frightened of these harmless, (mostly) inanimate objects?

Well, the answer may actually be that we are naturally programmed to fear dolls. Sure, the arrival of Child’s Play in 1989 probably made things worse, but there was actually already a name for people that have an irrational fear of dolls – pediophobia. The uneasiness that people experience around dolls involves a psychological phenomenon known as “the uncanny valley.”

The uncanny valley refers to a category of things which do not comfortably fit in our current psychological schemas. For example, we know that an inflatable giraffe toy is obviously fake. It looks unrealistic and is a source of entertainment. A smiling person, on the other hand, fits into our idea of something which is friendly and safe.

If you take a realistic-looking china doll, however, our experience falls somewhere in between these two states. On one hand, we know rationally that the doll is just a toy. On the other hand, it has an appearance similar to a human and this causes a feeling of uncanniness. To put it more simply, it gives us the creeps.

Essentially, human brains aren’t really equipped to deal with “fake faces”. The more realistic a fake face looks, the more unsettling it becomes. This innate uncomfortableness is then exaggerated by doll horror movies, where the doll comes to life. What is strange is that you may recall a time when you were a young child that one of your biggest fantasies was one of your childhood toys coming to life. One day, almost out of nowhere, this fantasy transformed into a disturbing nightmare.

So yes, the Anabelle franchise uses and abuses jumpscares, Childsplay gets stuck in with the gore and The Boy is an altogether creepy movie. But, these films all lean on a natural uneasiness around dolls which is present within many of us. For psychologists, this revolves around the idea of the “uncanny valley” but for the rest of us, the feeling is best described as “the creeps.”

The post Why are Dolls in Movies so Terrifying? appeared first on Entertainment For Us.