To Fear Coded, a podcast where we talk about media from the horror genre and take a queer reading of a single book, video game, film, podcast or TV show to explore just how queer horror can be.

We are still deep in Dolls Semper, a month long exploration of dolls in horror, and this time we have returned to The Conjuring universe to discuss Annabelle creation.

I'm Marilee.

I'm Tyler and I'm David.

And we want to thank all the bats in our belfry for being a part of our amazing community by supporting Fear Coded Patreon.

So thank you so much to Will Knight of Cuts, Doug, Jacob, Alyssa, Blake, Puckish, Rogue, Tyler, Derek, Maureen, Tommy and John.

That's my uncle John.

Hi.

My Uncle John.

Hi, Uncle John.

Forgive us Father for we are about to sin, but before we do I want to check in with my Co host to see how things are going for them in the landscape of horrors that our real world has to offer.

What's making y'all feel scared or what is making you feel prepared?

I am scared.

No, I am scared because it's cold.

And it's not just that it's cold, which is fine, whatever.

Like I understand how the earth works.

I took earth science in college.

Thank you.

But, and I remember less of that than I remember of this movie and that is a low bar.

Here's what I'll say is that I used to have a very high tolerance for the cold because I was born in Michigan.

I'm a Michigan gander.

I guess our our actual name is Michiganian and I that.

That's wrong.

That's just.

Incredible.

That is wrong.

That is wrong.

I'm a Michigander.

I had to take winter survival classes.

I've talked about them on the podcast before.

You both positive that it was some sort of child abuse.

I just can't believe that I'm to a point where if I go out to take the trash out without a jacket, I regret it for the rest of the evening.

I, I can like never get warm again.

Now I, I have developed too much tolerance for the Mediterranean heat that now and it's what is it?

It's, it's 9°.

That's that's a, that's a fine temperature.

That's like 50s.

That's not cold.

Thank you for translating that for silly Americans because I I was like, that seems like a no low number, but I know.

But that's not what I'm thinking of when you say 9.

Yeah, no, 9°F would be cold to everyone.

Everyone feels like that's cold.

Yeah, 9°C.

I think people in London would be laughing at me right now.

People in Stockholm, that's summer.

That's probably not summer.

Please don't write to me, Stockholm listeners.

Anyway, so I'm, I guess I'm scared because I feel like I've lost a part of myself that could tolerate cold, but in exchange I have found a part of myself that can tolerate heat.

So maybe it's OK.

Maybe it's just a balance.

It is definitely a balance.

I think like think of it as like you are, you are moving on to a new part of your life that is meant to embrace the Mediterranean climbs and enjoy some peace and relaxation during the warm months.

And then you could just bundle up in a cozy cardigan when you have to go take the trash out.

Look, I have this, I have this delightful.

We're going to call this a shawl.

It's like a blanket.

Let's call it a shawl.

Blanket that's I'm so sorry.

That is a blanket.

There are shawls.

That one's a blanket, but.

You are wearing it as a shawl, so I'm gonna call it a shawl for your sake.

It's cosplaying as a shawl, Marilyn.

That's fair, actually.

You look so cozy.

Yeah, don't I look cozy?

That's good, because this provides no warmth whatsoever.

This is aesthetic only.

Then that is certainly a shawl and not a blanket.

Yeah, that's fair.

That's fair.

I respect that also, just just for other Americans.

I, I went ahead and I I just googled it.

9° in Celsius is 48.2°.

Fahrenheit.

That's pretty.

Yeah, that's.

Pretty chilly under.

50, I think we could all agree, is in the chilly area at the very least.

If you're not going to say it's cold, it's chilly.

Not in Michigan.

That's like golfing weather or, I don't know, picking corn weather or, I don't know, dating your cousin.

I don't know someone else.

Go Tyler.

Are you feeling scared or prepared this week?

I'm feeling scared this week.

Is it because of the dating cousin thing that I just said?

Did that make you scared?

No, because Ohio State beat Michigan the other day, so I'm very happy about that.

But that is not having any bearing on my feeling prepared or scared.

I'm feeling scared today because of that dreadful B word burnout.

I think I have come to realize that the speed at which I have been moving through life since the move has been simply too much.

I have too much on my plate.

I keep saying yes to things when I should start saying no to things.

And I am at the point where I am just like if I have a conversation with someone, I think I might kill them because I truly just need time alone.

That excludes YouTube by the way.

I should I should add we're.

Just I don't think we're actually real.

We're just parts of your subconscious.

Yeah, this whole thing is my.

Subconscious.

Yeah, Merrily is your Ed.

I'm your super ego.

No, no, this is making too much sense.

Can't do that.

Let's move on.

But yes, I have.

To Google something real fast.

I am indeed feeling the burnout so I am taking steps to try and alleviate that.

I already cancelled a big trip that I was going to do, unfortunately, but that was also like having to be smart and responsible with money.

And that's money.

Responsibility of the worst.

And it's just like, OK, I just need, I need like a slumbering period.

I need, I need a time where I can maybe like go off into the woods and be left alone and just focus on me for a bit because I, I'm, I'm tired.

I'm tired of responsibility.

I'm tired of making decisions.

I'm tired of doing things.

I truly just need to veg out.

And yeah, if I can't be a vegetable soon, I'm going to lose it.

So yeah, we'll see what happens there.

Preferably I'm taking a carrot to stay on brand with the with the red hair.

I see, I see, I see.

You were talking about what vegetable you would like to be.

I just thought maybe you wanted to eat a carrot, which is also a great choice.

I'd love Yeah, my I see celery.

I also love Celery.

I also love Celery.

That's very that's an unpopular opinion.

I will say a lot of people do not like celery, but it's delicious.

Yeah, yeah.

I was talking about this with my trainer, Rafa, and I then told him about ants on a log, which I didn't assume that he would have ever heard of before.

And now I have to go find raisins and peanut butter so I can bring him ants on a log so that he can experience that that that I think pivotal childhood moment.

To the American food store, yes.

To the American food store.

Yeah I think you could probably find raisins in like the regular supermarket though, cuz Spanish food just puts raisins in places that they do not belong.

It's it's interesting you said that merrily because I think peanut butter is the easier one for me to get.

I can get raisins at the market, but I don't think I can get them at the supermarket.

OK.

Prunes, yes prunes I can get cuz prunes help you you know.

Digest.

David rubbing his tummy on the camera.

Prunes are critical.

3 prunes a day.

33 Good God, now I'm scared of something else.

Merrily Please save me.

Tell me if you're feeling prepared or scared.

You know, I I was all set to be here and say that I was prepared about something, but honestly, I'm going to be honest, I'm also feeling really burnt out, so I'm going to go scared instead we.

Dragged you down, yes.

Yes, you did a little bit because like I was going to all going to be like it's not right now, but when this episode comes out, I'll be prepared because the new Knives Out movie is out and I'll have watched it.

I'll be very prepared about it.

But like that's future me and I don't care about future me right now.

Present me is so tired, so tired.

I'm tired.

I've just been doing a lot of stuff and it's just what if we all took a little nap instead of talked for two hours?

Can we do that?

No.

Can people listen to that?

No.

OK, got it.

We.

Simply must talk about this film.

But, you know, I think there is hope on the horizon.

Do you both feel like there's a little bit of a stretch where there is some recovery time not only in our schedule for the podcast, but also like in your lives?

I have taken some time off so hopefully that will that will happen and I'll be able to relax.

But commercial just got sick and so I am actively trying to disinfect everything and maintain some distance and not smooch which is very difficult.

But so I'm hoping that I will not be sick during my PTO because that is not the kind of rest I want.

I wanted to choose to veg out and not be forced to veg out.

Yeah, it's a different.

Vibe.

It's a different vibe.

I was a little sick yesterday and tried to play Stardew Valley during illness and I started to get this pressure in my eyeballs and it it's a it's an unpleasant.

We've all had it right.

Yeah, where?

You kind of feel like your eyeballs.

You kind of feel like your eyeballs are being sucked out, like you're in a saw trap.

And I was like, oh, I gotta, I gotta like close my eyes for a little while.

And I was like, oh, I can't play Stardew Valley like this.

This this one.

Worked.

I can't play Stardew Valley with my eyes closed.

No, I'm not there yet.

I'm one day I could probably play Bilatro with my eyes closed, but not Stardew Valley.

I think I could do the fishing game with my eyes closed for Stardew Valley, but I don't know that the rest of the game.

I think you need your eyes too much.

So I'm glad that you've got some PTO.

Marilee, do you have any Oasis on the horizon in the in the Desert of Burnout?

I mean, yes and no.

There's a lot of stuff that I got to do this month, but I know for a fact that I'm I'm going to make sure that I have some time to like turtle about it for sure.

Turtle about it.

I love this, I do.

Turtling No put your carroting, put your head up and just.

Well now this just merrily looks cool and I look like a babushka.

We're.

Going to get a copyright takedown notice for that.

Yeah, probably.

Well.

She's she's very litigious, but running up that hill with legal documents.

Oh, no papers flying in the wind.

No wonder she made a a deal with God.

He also will sue people.

Incredible.

A deal with God.

Well, today we're talking about a deal with the other side of the coin, because we're talking demons.

That's right, we're back in The Conjuring universe because we are talking about the film Annabelle Creation, which was written by Gary Doberman and directed by David Sandberg.

By the way, did we look up David Sandberg?

I mean a little Why?

I just feel like he's a we don't usually give this to directors, but I feel like he is an enrollee of the Arbogast school for portly handsome gentleman actors slash directors.

I mean, listen, I am not the, the, the, the person who makes this determination like that's, but I think he should be considered at least a nominee if not enrolled personally.

My goodness.

Yeah, so I'm glad that I brought this up to you.

There was another thing, though, that I wanted to get on your mind.

Have either of you ever played Iconoclasts?

It's a metroidvania from a little while ago.

I have heard of iconoclasts, but I have not his.

Younger Brother is the developer of Iconoclasts, which was like one of the Game of the Year nominees in 20/18/2017 or whatever.

Yeah.

And I just was like, how, how does this happen?

How does a does a man and his brother make a successful video game and make, well, this film?

Not just this film, because there's another shining gem in this man's filmography, and that is the 2025 film Until Dawn.

Anyway, this movie, Annabelle Creation, is the second movie in The Conjuring franchise that we've covered.

Because as you all know, we discussed The Nun earlier this year with Excommunic April.

And this is a direct sequel, but a story that is a prequel to the 2014 film Annabelle, which, though it involves the doll, we were absolutely not going to cover on this podcast.

No.

No, no.

The movie follows the Mullins, 12 years after the tragic death of their daughter, opening their home to a group of orphaned girls after their orphanage had to shut down.

When one of the children, a little girl with polio named Janice, discovers a strange doll locked in the bedroom of the deceased child, supernatural shenanigans swiftly follow.

Well, there really is a supposedly haunted doll named Annabelle.

These movies created an entirely fictional back story for her, so please don't get get any of this confused with the actual supposed real life in air quotes.

Haunting.

We've discussed our familiarity with the TCU or The Conjuring cinematic Universe previously, but what is your history with Annabelle Creation specifically?

And has your relationship with The Conjuring verse changed since the last time we discussed it?

Mine has changed since the last time we saw it because I watched that new Warrens take Manhattan or whatever it was, which I will say here, Spanish language version are called the Warren files.

It is not called conjuring last rites.

It is called the Warren files.

I think the Warren files.

Full is it?

Is it The Conjuring Colon Warren files?

No, there's no conjuring.

I I don't think we it's just good.

Yeah, I don't think we have a good word for that.

So it's just the Warren Files anyway.

So I watched it in Vos.

I watched this in Virgin original with Spanish subtitles and I had AI had a fine enough time with it.

It it was sort of unremarkable, as was this film.

I think that maybe these Conjuring films are fine while you're watching them and if they're bad that they stick in your mind, and if they're otherwise, they just sort of evaporate after a certain period of time.

Because this is my fourth time watching Annabelle Creation because I needed to prepare for this podcast.

I watched it once and had forgotten everything that happened to the film when I went to take my notes.

And so I had to watch it again.

But yeah, I feel, I feel pretty.

I feel pretty fluent in the Warrens's going ONS.

And I don't know how you all feel, but like, I don't need them here.

Ed and Lorraine, you stay home.

You're not born yet.

Who knows?

We don't.

We don't need you.

We don't need you here.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

What about you, Tyler?

For me, my relationship with The Conjuring verse has not changed since our our experience with the nunnery in the nun.

Enough of that nonsense I say.

But I watched this particular movie at a Halloween party once.

I remember it more because it was right after my best friend Maureen got married and we had our Halloween party and she wore her Halloween dress which is very iconic of her.

Love you, Maureen, but I have to say I didn't remember anything like big from the movie that time.

And watching it again, I still don't really remember too much.

I remember some of the scares, but I feel like a lot of these Conjuring movies, they have like a like a grab bag of specific types of scares that they do and they just kind of pull it out and it's just like, oh, here's this one.

There's a thick creepy thing standing in the darkness and we can't see it.

Oh, something is interacting with a child in the dark and we can't see it and it's just like, OK, I get it.

And so I feel like this is kind of sort of a midway mid tier addition to The Conjuring verse.

I don't, I'm not like I I like the original conjuring and I really liked The Conjuring too.

Electric movement.

Yeah.

But the rest of them I I'm just not super impressed with.

I got to say, I'm kind of with you on this on this, David.

I think like if you're watching them, they're good in the moment and then they kind of fade away.

And if they're bad, you remember the bad.

Tyler, did you did you watch?

Cuz I know merrily did.

Did you watch that Last Rites film yet?

No.

OK.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about it.

I heard the double maybe do it was bad and I heard do it.

Is bad.

I heard last rites is fine.

Merrily the basement is too big.

The basement is too big.

It's on the list of things that the basement is too big.

No, you're right, the basement is too big.

So So here's my thing.

I hadn't seen this movie previously as if you listen to our none episode.

I will say that I've only seen like The Conjuring classic and Conjurings take London.

But when conjuring last rites was going to theaters, my sister was like, hey, let's go watch this in theaters.

And I said OK, so I had a mini marathon with myself.

I watched all of the other conjurings and like all of the OK, so that's a.

Lie on a Binge is a little wild too.

No, again, it was over a couple of days.

And also here's the thing.

I was told, hey, we're not actually going to be able to do this.

So I stopped about like after this movie and then I and then we was told Oh no, the movie is back on actually.

So I had to like slam like the last couple real fast.

So this is true.

The only Conjuring movies I now have not seen are The Nun 2, which is the apparently the Good Nun, and Larona, which is tangentially related at best.

A lot of people disavow it from the franchise.

Larona seems like a weird side spin off that also.

Didn't really handle like.

No, from what I what from what I looked up, the La Yarona movie is not good in any way shape or form.

Yeah.

Well, that that sounds like we got to cover it in 2026 then.

Please don't do that to me.

I will say that this movie, because I did the notes for it, I had to watch it a bunch of times.

I will say I feel a lot better about this movie than The Nun because the first time I watched The Nun, I remember thinking this is fine and didn't really have any other thoughts about it.

And the more I really sat with The Nun, the less I liked it.

This movie, I watched it for the first time.

It's like this is fine.

And here now, having watched it three times this week to do these notes, I'm here to report to you that this movie is fine.

So way better than The Nun.

Way better than I quite like, actually.

My favorite of the Annabelle's is Annabelle Come Home because that is like can't be bonkers, which I kind of.

Enjoy.

It is OK.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does turn a bend.

It does the The movie is at its worst when it takes itself seriously, because the rest of the movie does not take itself seriously.

No, no, it's very can't be fun and I like that a lot and I will make some apology is here now on the air for conjuring 3 devil made me do it because when that movie came out I was a devil made me do it hater because I thought it was about the fucking Amityville house again and like I was like leave the de Feos alone.

What is this?

Why are we doing this?

I got it was it's a different other thing.

It's not actually having to do with them.

So thank God I was.

And honestly, I kind of.

Three I don't think is very good, but it does have an evil sorceress who's going directly against the Warrens, which I did think was very fun.

Could have had more of that energy.

But no, we have to pretend we're serious.

So.

Marilee, you said that the nun too, was the good nun.

Was the good nun the one with Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin?

No, that's the good son.

There we go.

I'll say for Annabelle creation, the runtime, it's a little long.

We have taken a scalpel to this two hours.

This could have been a 140.

Easily 30 minutes trimmed off of here, and I think that the problems that I have with this movie are pretty specific in that I think that the writer doesn't know enough about Catholicism to have nuns in his film.

A and BI think that they really tried to have their cake and eat it too.

Because I think that the movie should either be about the Mullins or the girls.

You can't have both of them.

It draws focus and as a result the plots kind of convoluted.

And then I say pick the girls because this film lives and dies with the performance of Talitha Bateman, who plays Janice.

I think this is a fantastic child actor.

This was probably the most impressed I've been with a child actor in recent memory.

I thought she was fantastic.

Some of the other girls are OK.

Talitha Bateman is wonderful.

Yeah, I like the girls a lot.

I think that there could have been a lot more to do with the girls.

I also think the idea of the dolls creator is a really good one.

They could have done stuff with, but they.

Don't they don't?

No.

Well, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

But.

Before we get there, we have to go here.

And where is here?

You might ask why?

It's the theme discussion, of course.

So our first theme of today's episode is the prequel problem.

Annabelle Creation is a prequel of a prequel of the opening scare of a movie, and it goes out of its way to tie directly back into Annabelle from 2014.

It even made a few stylistic references to the first movie featuring Annabelle, The Conjuring, from back in 2013.

But being so heavily tied into the franchise's continuity can cause problems with this movie.

Here's the deal.

I think this sounds great in a pitch room.

Hey, what if we told the story about where Annabelle came from?

That sounds amazing until you start writing it.

It's one of those things that like, I'm really more of an idea guy brings up and not someone who actually maybe makes films.

Yeah, yeah, 'cause, like, especially because in that first Annabelle film, they kind of made it a point to make it seem like the Annabelle doll was a collectible item.

Like, like it even like the one point the lady, like, picked up Annabelle, she was so excited.

She'd been looking for this doll.

She puts it up on the shelf with like two other dolls that have the same outfit but like, different faces and hair.

So like you get the idea that Annabelle is because of the rights, the real life in giant air quotes, Annabelle doll is of course a raggedy and doll.

So her likeness is completely different.

They like their explanation of what this doll is.

I think it's a really good idea.

It's just I I think that tying in with the Higgins was a huge mistake.

I was woefully confused by that the first time I saw this.

I had to ask for contacts because the movie just kind of ends on a weird note if you don't know anything about The Conjuring.

Yes.

Or the first Annabelle.

See, I don't even remember like where this this ends and begins because it's just like we're doing a little too much of The Conjuring cinematic universe here.

Like it really has to stand completely on its own.

And I think some little nods are are fine, but even the little nods that we get, sometimes they feel a little too like hammer on the head, like, oh, it's the nun, the nun from the movie, the nun from the movie The Conjuring 2.

And it's just like, we've put too many hats on this.

So I think that things like that make the movie overly complicated.

I do think that like we have a large cast of girls and I don't know if they're always used most effectively.

I think we could have cut down that number.

I think also the issue with the Mullins is that they provide like a really interesting like idea for the story, but then they're they don't really make the best use of them.

Like the dad is just kind of like grumpy, ominous caretaker man for a while.

And then the wife is just mysterious woman upstairs for a while, like a very Miss Habisham situation.

And it's like we we just kind of leave it there until it becomes like, oh, you've done what?

And then suddenly exposition, exposition, exposition.

And we really did not have to do that.

No.

I'm I'm kind of dying for her Phantom of the Opera mask though that.

I mean, that's great.

That was like, that was a great gag.

It was, but God I wish we had like just more more.

Yeah, yes, just make her a central figure.

Exactly.

Yeah, cuz like I, I agree with you, David, I do think that the girls are great and I would have loved more of them.

It's just the problem is to introduce the girls is to directly tie into the Higgins of it all.

And to like have Janice become Annabelle Higgins is such a wild thought that we didn't, we didn't need that.

We didn't need that.

But Janice would have died, and then things would have made more fucking sense, you know?

You hear that listeners merrily wants the death of a child.

Just I do another day at the office here.

I mean, I think I'm stealing your gig a little.

Bit yeah, it really, it really is.

You go back and listen to that Carrie episode.

Really.

I wanted that that kid on the bike to just like, eat it 100 times over.

Yeah, the whole time, I think every time a child is mentioned in this podcast, David either talks about them, want him wanting them to die, or he's surprised that he didn't want this.

Child to die, that's true.

And I didn't want Janice to die until she was like a demon, I guess.

So then like I sort of lost interest in her.

But she was great at being a scared little girl and I.

Just she was incredible.

You don't always get that with little kids in horror.

No.

You know, usually when there's like a scary little girl, it's kind of a different sort of vibe.

But even then, like a good scared kid is hard to come by.

Yeah.

Well, sometimes they're kids, but they're grown ass women.

Like the like the two acted to like portray it on screen.

You're not actually getting a little girl.

And when she was in this, Bateman was like actually young, which is cool.

Well, our next theme is where does he get all those wonderful toys?

This movie is obsessed with dolls.

Who would have thought?

Am I right?

Samuel Mullins is a toy maker, and the creator of Annabelle no less, so there are lots of doll parts hung up around his workspace.

But more than just that, Janice and Linda both carry baby dolls.

The Punch and Judy puppets, the dollhouse, even the Scarecrow would be considered doll like.

So we are celebrating Doll Sembre in style.

Yeah, I liked, I liked pointing this out.

I love that so much of this is about the creation of dolls.

But as Marily already said, you don't end up really doing anything with Mr.

Mullins.

Like there is no there.

There's like this brief moment that's going to happen later in the film where he is confronting Annabelle and you're like, Oh my God, it's the creator and his creation.

Like we have like a little mini Frankenstein moment.

And then the demon inside about Annabelle is just like let me break your hand, which is cool but is doesn't really deliver on the like Promethean.

I created life and now love presents me.

There's not really an emotional catharsis.

No.

No.

Listen, David, if you like that, I hope you hold on for next week because we're going to have a lot of that there.

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes I do.

I have seen this next week's film already, and I do know that there's a little bit more of that central theme.

But I you know what?

I think really for the month we didn't get one that was really like, I made Galateaean and then she started talking to me and now I'm in love with the statue.

It's it that is a it is a story that like I'm well familiar with, but maybe it just isn't in the horror space or we just didn't pick one of those for this month.

Yeah, I definitely think that could be horror very easily.

We just didn't end up with that in our plate.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't really see that happening too much with like scary dolls is the thing.

I've seen it with like just the Frankenstein kind of story that's been retold.

But dolls, I don't know.

I don't see that very frequently.

Yeah, that's more.

That's only a missed opportunity.

They need to work on that Hollywood.

Yeah, yeah.

Work on it, Hollywood.

Call me.

Well, the girls are fighting.

The girls are fighting is our third and final theme for today's episode.

So in the group of orphan children there is a pseudo mean girl squad with Carol and Nancy seemingly in charge of the hierarchy.

While not the focus of the film, there are some fun early moments of tension between the children formed because of this.

My God, I would have loved more of this.

I would have loved more of this.

If the girls are our focus, then we have this group of four girls and then 2 girls outside of that.

And like anything like dealing with the tension of that would have been much, much better.

Agreed, Agreed.

Well, and and then you've sort of got because they're Mean Girls, it's OK for them to be scared by whatever demons are happening.

And so then you throw more scares at them because they deserve it.

They deserve to be scared.

Yeah, or, or even you could do more of the I'm experiencing horror.

I tell people about it and they don't believe me.

Kind of thing, right?

Right.

We love that shit.

And that's a classic with the doll movies that we watched.

Yeah, that trend keeps coming up, but we we have so little of it in this movie.

Yeah, despite I must remind you, a 2 hour run.

Yeah, God, this movie, there's so much there.

Except it's.

So.

Thin, it's thin, there's not a lot, there's not a lot happening, even though there's a lot going on.

Like I, I genuinely, as I was doing like the scene right up, it was hard to find stuff to not include because it all like ties back in with each other.

It's just if you try and find, if you try and poke in past a millimeter, you will evaporate everything.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely that.

I feel like it, it would have been nice to have just like committed more to the Mullins or more to the children.

Like if it were like, I totally would have kept like the same number of children that we had if the story was more focused on the children.

Yeah, it's not.

And instead we could have had like a smaller pool of kids and then have them tied in more directly with the Mullins and having more interactions with the Mullins.

But we don't have too much of that either.

Like, no, Mr.

Mullen is just kind of like antagonistic sort of because he's so like in grief and he's crotchety as a result of that.

And it's like, this could have been such a more complex character.

Like, we could have had a lot of interiority with both him and Misses Mullins, where we're doing callbacks to the intro of this movie.

Like there's so many great scenes that they could have pulled from and instead it's just kind of left there.

Yeah, wow.

A conjuring cinematic universe that we've punched up.

Mark another tally on your sheets kids, because here we are again finding better ways to improve these films.

I don't know what to tell you, James Wan.

Like call.

Us.

He was not involved in this film.

Come on now.

You think you think EP and name only on this one?

Yeah.

Yeah, some reports came across his desk.

He might have looked at some of them for sure.

He's like budget looks good keep going.

I will say they changed the Annabelle doll for this film.

They reduced her overbite and softened her cheeks.

I didn't notice it was watching, but after I read it in the I don't know, maybe IMDb trivia or wherever, I looked and wow it looks very different when you look at them side by side.

Yeah, I mean, I that makes sense to me because this is her first iteration.

She'll just get more evil as time goes on, I think.

Yes, and we all know that as you get more evil, you get more of an overbite.

Yes, that is.

That is absolutely.

If Fable taught me anything, it's that the more evil acts you do, the more disgusting looking you become.

Yes, fart in front of villagers and you can you can change your teeth.

Well, there's a couple questions that we have to ask of everything that we consider for the podcast.

And the first of them is, is it horror?

Were you scared watching Annabelle Colon creation?

Does this belong in a discussion about horror media?

I think some of these jump scares are really, really effective.

Like I think the movie is at its best when it's trying to scare me and it's like, congratulations, we've we've done that totally.

Like there are some moments in here where I go and like really effective or like grown in in like discomfort because like the the tarp over the doll, like we'll talk about that.

But that's like one of the things that's just like God creepy.

It's everything in between the scary moments that I'm just like, I'm ready to take a nap.

Yeah, this movie is really fit on the ground for everything but the scares.

Scares are good and a lot of good.

A lot of good photography to deliver scares.

There's a.

Lot of times.

The scare is just catching Annabelle in the right leg, getting her on her good side.

Like, that's all it actually really takes to get a scary shot in this film.

And we're doing a really good job with that.

And I do, I appreciate that.

Here's what I'll say, and this is for my Letterbox review as well.

For the first time I watched this, I was impressed by how practical this film was.

Yes.

And that might come from other things that I was watching when I first watched this film, where I was like, thank God we're on a real set.

I think it hoped that it looked like it was filmed outside of Rancho Cucamonga or something, just like.

Genuine, genuinely, they were like, we got these kids, they can only work 6 hours a day.

Fucking union, fucking child protection laws.

God I wish it was the 60s.

We gotta drive them back home, but you know what it looks great it the farm looks great.

The barn looks great.

The farmhouse looks great.

This is set decorated to all fucking hell like the Mullins are hoarders and I'm here for it.

It delivers on all of that, which makes it scarier when Last Rites.

Sorry Tyler for the spoiler here.

When Last Rites is doing it's CGI nonsense.

I could not be asked to care what happens to Ed Warren.

Ed Warren, If a computer graphic image gets you, that's that's your own.

That's a new buddy.

Yeah, now if, if a if a shot of Annabelle just sitting there that is filmed very scary, gets you.

I do feel bad for you.

Yeah.

And that's the different.

Animals barely gets anybody in this film.

It's a bummer.

I.

Know, but I I like that we did cover Annabelle for this though, because she's a very different type of doll from everyone else that we've talked about this month because she doesn't do anything.

Don't mean to be like she's not.

She's not talking, talking Tina, who's like, I'm gonna trick you with my words and she's not Chucky who's like, I'm gonna stab you with my knife and she's not Methreegan next week who's gonna like dance your head off Like she's just really like, she's there to be photographed and look scary.

Yeah, and shout out to I I just Googled this while we were talking.

Maxime, Alexandra, Alexander Dre.

I don't know he's Belgian, but he is the cinematographer for this film and he did a fantastic job.

Great job, Great job.

Yep.

But whatever, whatever horror, that's only half of what we're talking about.

To be on Fear Coded podcast, you also have to be queer.

So like, let's discuss this movie using queer theory.

Do we think Annabelle creation how, how queer is it, how we're doing?

The first character that I'd like to bring up in this conversation is Sister Charlotte, because I think that there's a little bit of a way that I could read Sister Charlotte as being sort of queer because she is pushing back on some of the normative expectations.

She is sort of the coalescer of this found family of girls.

But then a couple times she's just like reinforcing the status quo and she's a nun.

And God, in The Conjuring world, there are to be a nun is to be a white man in the regular world.

Everyone's a fucking nun in this world.

So I don't know that that buys as much as like the nun from Father Dowling mysteries.

So I don't know.

I I wanted her to be the main one.

But I think where my queerness has actually come in is is the girls.

And I think it's it's it's Janice and Linda in particular who have this closeness.

They're actually sisters.

They want to go go into a family together, so they'll be like sisters and there's AI think there's a queer reading to that.

Yeah, I absolutely agree.

I have a lot of really complicated feelings about Sister Charlotte and I'm very excited to get to those as we talk about the movie because honestly, I don't know that Sister Charlotte is even a real nun.

But we'll get to it if.

She's not a real nun then.

She's a queer hero.

Because if you're not a real nun and you wear a habit, you're either Whoopi Goldberg or you're gay.

Like, that's incredible.

I love that.

OK, I love that you love that.

But here's the thing, the girls I feel definitely can be read as queer because like this is the kind of friendship that you look back on years later in your life and you're like, oh, I liked like her.

Everything makes so much more sense now.

And like up to and including the batshit friend breakup.

Like that is such a a trope.

A lot of my bisexual or queer like female friends talk about their best friend from when they were kids.

With so much hindsight of there was longing there.

I wanted to be girlfriend, not girlfriends and and that is a lot of what I can see there.

I like that.

I like both of those reasons and I agree with both of them.

I definitely see more of the queerness in Janice and Linda.

I don't see it as much with sister Charlotte for reasons that we will go into.

But I it is related also to what you said, David, about it like she's kind of upholding heteronormativity like, and it's kind of in the guise of like social structure and it's just, it's, she's more complicated than I want her to be.

Yeah, she looks great though.

Looks fantastic.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Well then, are you both ready to dive in to Annabelle colon creation?

Let's go.

I'm talkie Tyler, and I don't think I like you.

A talkie Tyler, just what I always wanted.

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Now back to the dolls.

The movie opens with a toy maker, Samuel Mullins, creating a doll that would become Annabelle.

Quick pause here.

Excellent sequence on this doll being created.

Wow, we're doing it from the start.

This is a fantastic opening sequence that gets slammed into a smash of them being at this church.

I wish that we had gone from making the doll right to the tunnel card, but whatever.

I don't get to make movies.

So he's interrupted by a note that says find me that's shoved under his door.

His daughter B is playing a game with him.

Esther Mullins joins in, and they both tickle little B.

It's super cute.

Everything's perfect.

And after church on Sunday, when Samuel is changing a tire on his truck, B is struck by an oncoming car and killed.

And that's when you get the title card.

That was great.

Can I just say I love her?

Her.

Being killed was great.

I mean, it was great.

Yeah, it was shot so well.

Like shot well.

I didn't even remember like that sequence happening.

But when I saw it happen on this viewing I was just like holy shit what a way to start.

Yeah, when when I sat down to do the notes, I was trying to think about Annabelle creation.

That was actually one of the only things I remembered about this movie was like hard cut and and how surprised I was that they were like going there immediately.

We have to kill a child.

We must kill a child right away.

But I mean, it is important for the story.

12 years later, on the same road to the Mullins home, we meet a bus full of orphan girls, particularly Janice and Linda.

They're sad that they're going to an orphanage instead of to their new home, but they are thankful to be together.

Still.

Janice and Linda swear that if somebody wants to adopt one of them, they have to adopt the other.

This is where we also first meet Charlotte, Sister Charlotte, Charlotte the nun.

And I was just like, why does this?

Can't you just be like a social worker?

We already had the whole house.

It already exists.

Just make this person secular.

Yeah, genuinely some of the worst parts of this movie to me are because she is a nun.

It would have been so much better if she was just like their caretaker or something.

The game How will we have synergy with the nun series of movies if we don't have a nun in this one?

Who could talk about the nuns in the in the nun?

Movie.

I don't know.

I don't know how'd you become a social worker?

I was traveling Romania.

I met these nuns like that's.

It's like they.

Inspired me to stay in secular life.

I saw how they were running shit and freaked me out.

I hated these bitches.

They didn't even know that there was a fifth nun standing there with this photo.

Anyway, Yeah, I don't know.

Here we here we are.

We've met the girls.

I like the girls.

I like the girls a lot from the very beginning.

I like that they're talking about their little dolls.

I think it's very cute.

I love that we're grounded in the toy of all of this right at the very beginning.

Yeah, absolutely.

Here's my thing.

And I, we've already touched on this a little bit, but like, well, I really enjoy this beginning scene.

I feel like if you're going to be about the Mullins, it's got to be about the Mullins.

If it's about the girls, we shouldn't have this opening scene.

And if they wanted to include it, which I do think that they should because it's rules, I almost feel like it should have been like a flashback or a dream sequence or something.

Like if Janice was like psychic like Judy and Lorraine and sister for Amiga from the nun whose name I don't remember right now.

Like then we could have gotten this information without having to see it ourselves.

Because as it stands, this sequence is just for us and it doesn't really do anything narratively for the story.

You know, Merrily.

I really like that too, because it would have given them an opportunity to take the whole special psychic girl trope that they've been running with and then twist it because each time the demons had pursued the special psychic girl because she's special and psychic.

And in this, it would have been fun for it to actually happen where the demon would succeed.

And then we kind of understand the stakes going forward of what happens if Lorraine Warren or the the sister Farmiga ever gets captured and has their soul eaten.

The disrespect to sister I read on this podcast I will not stand for.

You're right, you're sitting poor.

Yeah.

Sister Irene will return in The Good Nun.

But will she be in the Flying Nun?

I wish.

I mean, you should watch the Nun too, there's some flying.

Oh no.

For real, whatever, a little girl gets yeated out of a chair in this film too.

There's there's The Conjuring universe has moved into trampoline era.

Like there are people flying all over the place in these films.

It's true, it's true, it is true on I really did enjoy the Baby Jane destroyed all of it all like in the road.

I thought that that was a really fun reference that I wouldn't have gotten last year because I hadn't seen Baby Jane before, but now I have it, I can see that and be like haha, someone who studied the classics I.

Love that they were like this is just for you psycho bennies.

I also just want to point out that this is this sequence where Little Bee gets killed.

Like is definitely feeling like Hereditary, but this movie came out one year before Hereditary did.

Oh, so we're saying that that they stole this sequence from?

From Ari Aster Come on the pod and answer for your crimes.

I still haven't seen that I need to watch it.

Oh boy, we'll talk about it on the pod.

Put it on the left.

That's the only way I watch things anymore.

I still haven't watched Another Child's Play since our conversation with Derek and I was like champing at the bit to do that.

And I just haven't had the time because I had to watch this movie so many times to even understand what was happening.

I said in your defense, it's not on streaming anywhere, so.

Child's play.

I know we made legal backups for Universal Studios so.

I'll contact, I'll contact the the distributor.

Just in case they lost them if they lost the copy.

We have one now that is perfect.

I think I'm doing a service.

You are doing a service I really they appreciate you or they should.

Yeah, they should.

Well, you should appreciate me as I move on to the next section please.

Do please.

Do I'm running out of transition fuel here?

Y'all we have, we have to get to this, this house.

So the bus arrives at the Mullins and everyone is very excited about how large the house is.

Janice is worried at first when she hears that the bedrooms are on the 2nd floor, but Samuel reveals that the house has a chair lift he had previously installed for his wife.

Janice and Linda are excluded from the other girls and have to bunk alone in a much smaller room.

That night Janice can't sleep and a note is slipped under the door beckoning her, beckoning her to find the writer.

Another comes from the room down the hall that's kept locked, only it isn't locked now.

Thinking it's another of the girls from the orphanage, Janice enters the room and finds a Wonderland of toys using clues from a doll house on very until dawn of her, by the way, she unlocks a hidden door and reveals Annabelle.

Freaked out, understandably so, Janice tries repeatedly to close and even lock the door, but she can't get it to stay closed.

Eventually she covers the doll with a sheet, which immediately bites her in the butt.

With a scare, Annabelle is on the loose.

All right, let's just there's great scares in the sequence.

This is this is where we learned where the button was to scare the audience and we were like lizard, lizard, lizard.

This was this was an amazing part of the film.

I I loved a lot of this.

I again, Annabelle is so innocuous, but when you put a sheet over her and she moves, she's really fucking scary.

Oh my God, Oh my God, I love this sheet.

There's just like a fuzzy like silhouette of her in the background and not focus.

I love.

That that was.

Great.

I love that.

That is so much more frightening than showing me the actual thing, whatever that was, that you could just see some motion behind Janice when she's like looking outside and being like, I can't be with you cuz of polio.

And there's just like this like fuzzy image behind her and you're like, girl, Annabelle gonna get you.

Yeah, it's the white dress.

Like she's you.

You see, like that white dress shape, like smaller person behind somebody and you know, uh oh, she's gonna get you.

She's gonna get you.

Everywhere, tiny women in white dresses.

I off to them.

I off to them.

I just so so and you're we're so right.

All of these scares.

It's really good.

This is one of the the we're starting to go crazy.

We'd lose this momentum pretty quickly.

But like this whole sequence is really great.

And I also especially loved that sheet thing because it was a classic conjuring reference.

Like they do a lot of things in this film to like harken back to that first movie, and this is one that I really appreciated.

I'm.

Also going to say, when I read the notes, Merrily Rose, she covers the doll with a sheet, which immediately bites her in the butt.

And I was like, Oh my God, did she get bit in the butt?

I and I, I, I watched the scene.

I was like, I didn't see the bite in the butt.

And I rewound it.

Y'all.

I was like losing my mind watching this film.

And I then I was like, oh, this is an idiom.

This is a a standard idiom.

Yeah, yeah, we are all.

Doing so.

Well, so well and Annabelle 4 Annabelle in space or whatever, have her bite someone in the butt, I I think.

It wouldn't have to be Annabelle World Tour when she went on tour this last year, because they have neatly sewn up her timeline between, like, all three Annabelle movies.

We we've got her whole thing.

I don't know.

I don't know, Marilee.

I'm not trying to say anything because I don't want to spoil last rites for Tyler.

Yeah, I said I I still I I maintain Annabelle World Tour would be a great movie.

Thank.

You.

Yeah, Annabelle in Berlin just bite a German's ass.

They love that.

Oh, make it like during the Cold War period.

So it's like, it's like Atomic Blonde but with Annabelle.

Wow, she's just going after Gorbachev.

Look.

I'm stopping this conversation.

We're simply moving on.

So the next day the other girls send Linda away to play hide and seek with no intention for look, no intention of looking for her.

Instead, they explore the barn and find a creepy scarecrow in the house.

Janice asked Sister Charlotte for a confession and she tries to explain about the doll, but Charlotte does not listen to her.

Linda discovers a hidden passageway under the stairs and thinking it's the perfect spot to hide while exploring, she sees Annabelle sitting in a chair with something behind her that drags the doll into the darkness.

Terrified, rightly so, Linda screams and flees just as the other girls arrive back in the house and tell her that she's bad at hiding.

All right, I'm going to go on my smoke break while the two of you talk about how terrible this confession situation is.

Good God man, what the hell?

Yeah, they didn't even bother to look up the Wikipedia article about how confession works.

These people are killing me.

Seriously.

Seriously.

I was watching this this movie with my brother and he threw a fit in the scene.

I had to like, pause it.

We talked about like the intricacies of the Catholicism shit for like 10 minutes before you had to move on to the movie.

Because here is the thing, nuns cannot offer confession.

That is not a thing.

That is not a thing that nuns can do.

That it's.

It's a priest thing.

Yeah, only men.

You have to be a priest in order to have confession and absolve people from stuff.

That is just the way the Catholic Church works.

There's also in this sequence a bit where Sister Charlotte is talking about this trip that she took to this cloistered thing of nuns in Romania.

It's like a blatant tease for the nun, which is coming out the next year.

And here is the other thing.

Nuns who are cloistered and nuns who do public works and do good services like that are different types of nuns.

And then there's no reason why anyone would go to a very remote cloistered nun like Abby if you that if you were interested in doing public works instead of doing like orphanage shit.

He was.

He was furious.

It was very funny for me personally.

I just, it bothered me because not only was it just like factually wrong, is she also gave terrible advice to this child.

Yeah, like, not even like, you know, do 10 Hail Marys and an Our Father or something like that.

Instead, it was just like, don't do anything bad.

If you do something bad, then that could affect the whole group.

And then we could be kicked out and then we'll be homeless orphans, not just orphans that are orphans.

You're going to be you're going to make life miserable for everyone.

And wouldn't that be awful?

You should not do that.

And then it's like, this is truly the worst thing that you could say to a child in distress at this moment is just shut up.

Yeah, it's really bad.

Like you should offer a prayer and and you like that.

If this was with whatever Father Matthias is who is also there sometimes I guess he I could very much see him being like you have to apologize.

And maybe that's where we get like the Mullins back involved because you should tell do with the apology, right?

Like you have to offer penance.

And that's why it just the whole, the whole scene stinks.

It stinks.

It stinks.

Thank you, David.

Thanks.

That's what I was trying to do.

I can't hit that the critic voice.

Like you can, I got it, I got it.

It's pro or con.

Jon Lovitz is in my wheelhouse for voices.

It's a light.

OK, whatever, let's throw Sister Charlotte out for right now and let's talk about the demon under the stairs, because that scene fucking ruled.

That was one of my favorites in the whole film, that.

Was great.

Why go under the stairs?

You're in a horror movie.

You already know this.

You encountered a Well, no.

I guess her sister and kind of or her friend encountered the creepy doll.

This is Linda's first time.

OK, but Linda, you're allowed to do this.

But you're a fool.

And it but like she is a fool but damn it's a good scare.

Yeah, it's a good scare.

It's a good scare.

Like the demon.

So we've talked about this before.

I think demon eyes in the darkness are always gonna freak me out.

The way that they melted in and out.

And it wasn't like intentionally.

The focus you're supposed to be focusing on Annabelle was so creepy and really well done.

So I appreciate that it's that use of like light and darks in this movie that is just so effective.

Yeah.

And like, I do think that as you're watching this film, how bright your environment is really impacts and that's when you know the lighting is good because like the when I was watching the movie like the first time this week to like really tone set.

I was I did it in a dark room because I was watching a horror movie for fun.

And then when I was doing the notes, I was, it was bright.

I had my laptop up.

I was, I was typing like the scene descriptions out and you cannot see the demon if the room isn't dark enough.

And that's so good.

Yeah, well, that night, Nancy and Carol, who are the two oldest other girls, stay up and try to freak each other out with stories about Missus Mullins.

Unfortunately, as the house is infested with a supernatural entity, something freaks them out for real.

When the lights turn on, however, there's nothing there.

The next night, Janice and Linda both go into Bee's room after hearing a gramophone playing.

Janice tries to explain that she thinks the Mullins daughter played the music.

When Linda catches sight of Annabelle and insists that they leave, Janice wants to stay and is locked into the room.

Various scary things happen and I like them, but it this is a part where we could have picked like 2.

And then the ghost of B appears.

Janice asks what she needs before B reveals herself to actually be a demon and answers your soul.

Janice escapes the room, but she can't get any help from anyone upstairs.

She tries to go downstairs in the chairlift, but the chairlift is hijacked and she is thrown down the stairs.

Thrown down the stairs is accurate because she ends up down the stairs, but I must again impress him on the audience that she is yeated out of this chair.

She is.

She's gone.

Yeah, no, it's it's to be 100% fair, I that was a very simplistic description.

The darkness like grabs her.

We see a moment of where like the shoe just falls to the ground and then she's like thrown over the banister like several minutes later it seemed like.

I wish.

They had just done the shoe because I think that would have been better than like dropping her afterwards.

Yes, just do the shoe and then show her getting back from the hospital and being like damn girl you fell.

Yeah, that would have been.

That would have been a lot better.

Actually, I think you're both correct.

But I think this is where would have trimmed some of the timelines.

OK, listen, any 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there, it adds up.

Yep, here's the deal.

I think you need to have B slash the B demon, who's like this weird impolite creature that doesn't seem to follow any rules.

I think you need that because Annabelle doesn't do anything.

Remember Annabelle's whole thing.

She looks pretty, that's she has no other function.

Things happen around Annabelle.

She doesn't directly do things.

And so you need B to sort of be the one who can be like, I need your soul.

We got to move this plot along.

The Warrens are waiting and and that's kind of like where I feel like the bee ghost comes in and why I feel like the bee ghost storyline that gets exposition dumped on us in the third act kind of sucks in the end.

Yeah, I just, I have a lot of issues I'd like.

I know that we know that Annabelle is scary and I know that we know that Annabelle is infested with a demon.

And like there's going to be a whole thing with this cult of the Ram that's going to come up in the next movie, which is also the the the previous movie, and that keeps coming up in The Conjuring verse.

It's all dumb and stupid and I don't like it.

I just think that it's very funny the way that Bee turns around with like the demon face and the whole soul of it all, especially because the last time we saw the demon, the under the stairs, this the under the stairs scene was so deftly done and so like perfectly handled this.

No subtlety at all.

It's it's like hitting you over the head with a hammer.

And just the contrast between those two scenes is inherently hilarious to me personally.

Yes, yes.

I will say that the demons say in your soul it it.

It didn't work for me, but only because Shang Soong did it so much better in the Mortal Kombat movie.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

I can't beat that.

I can't beat that, Tyler.

In that case, we're just going to transition into the next part of the movie.

When Janice comes back from the hospital, she tries to explain what happened to Sister Charlotte, but Sister Charlotte doesn't believe her.

Upstairs, Linda hears a noise in the supposed to be locked bedroom and looks to the peephole to see Annabelle rocking in a rocking chair.

Afraid to sleep, she sits up with a toy gun and shoots it into the darkness.

Something very, very tall pulls it away from Linda and comes running into the room to scare her.

She gets up on the top bunk and is trapped there when Annabelle and something climb into the bottom.

Eventually she falls asleep and everything is normal in the morning.

OK, let's start with the good of this because great scares here, great scares here again.

And I got to say what's scaring me the most here are camera angles.

This is this is girl.

This is all about the angle.

This I think has the best shot of Annabelle scene in the film.

Which is what?

We're on the top bunk and we're shooting down on the bunks and we peek over and Annabelle's just like, hey, girl, yeah.

It's like and then the hand grabs it and pulls it away and.

Then the hand grabs it and pulls it away and so like the hands aren't even grabbing my girl.

So like, I don't have to be super scared of the hand, but I know the hand is there.

So I don't, I don't love it.

And I know Annabelle's there and I don't love that either because she's kind of scary.

I love that.

I love the tall darkness, whatever that is, that's grabbing her little pop gun and dragging the ball up to light like 20 feet in the air or whatever.

I think that's excellently done.

And then when we turn the camera to show essentially the balls POV down at Linda, that camera is looking down at her bald spot.

It is fantastic.

Good job camera work.

Good job camera.

Yeah, this whole sequence rules.

Though I will say one last thing, Linda.

Girl, close the fucking door.

Just close the door.

Just close the door.

Wouldn't have done anything, but it would have like helped, right?

Like you close the door?

I mean, she just goes to sleep on the top bunk after Annabelle is on the bottom bunk.

So like at some point of time you just sort of accept that like you got to go to bed.

Yeah, it it very much like I'm covered in the blanket.

Be like, guess I'll die and then she guess.

I'll die.

Guess I'll die.

OK, so again, I was watching this movie with my brother and at the scene at the top here where where she's Janice is talking to Sister Charlotte.

This is another moment that we had to pause and I had to talk this out with my brother because I don't know if either of you guys know this, but the first school that I went to was a was a school run by nuns.

I don't really remember it because I was we left when I was in like pre-K, but my brother went there for a couple more years than I did.

He's two years older than I am.

He remembers it more and this is a direct quote from him.

I wrote it down because I I loved it so much.

He said if I had told one of the nuns at Rosarian that I felt an evil presence somewhere they would have stopped what they were doing and prayed with me until I said it was gone.

And he was so furious that this nun tried to like explain away the the stuff and like, because this is this is pre Vatican 2.

This is this is supposed to be like a, you know, like a the church is very high mystical at this point.

He was so mad about this.

I thought it was very funny and.

I mean, like, yeah, the the fact one of the things that bothered me was the Sister didn't act like a fucking nun where she's.

Just like well.

This is, there's practical logic behind what's going on here.

You're not actually feeling weak.

This is just you are feeling like, I don't know, it felt like she was trying to go social worker but she's really bad at social work.

Sure.

Well, lots of social workers are just just.

Throwing that out there.

Yeah, it.

Would have been a lot better if this was just like a lay like a way person who is involved with the church, who worked with the the Catholic orphanage.

All of my problems with Sister Charlotte would be gone if it was.

She was just Charlotte, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Are you suggesting we have that woman from Midnight Mass of this role, Marilyn?

Oh my God.

Bev boy, whatever.

Bev Bev Keene.

Bev Keene.

Everything would be worse if it was Bev Keene.

No, no.

Maybe I would like that because then there will be more.

Contact.

Yeah.

I want, I want a rewrite of this film with Bev Keene as the as the matron of these girls.

Yeah.

You know what, even if we had a like I think the other part about Sister Charlotte that's a problem is that she doesn't really fit as like a characteristic nun.

Like she's not stern, she's not naive.

She's not like just starting out as a nun, like she and she doesn't really believe in any of like the magical like who do like crap that's in that's happening, like right, And and I feel like she's not a nun from a horror movie.

Well, she's not Sister Irene is is also the thing like Sister Irene was kind of queer because she was like, I'm going to teach you about dinosaurs because like funky and I'm going to like go on an adventure to Romania with Nancy Botwin's husband from weeds.

Like there's a there.

There was sort of a there was sort of a joy in sister Irene and none of that's here for sister Charlotte.

No, it it she's kind of like nice, I guess to the girls, like she's got some like momming going on.

But then just make her like, I don't know, like a mom, a governess.

She needs to just be a governess.

This just needs to be Jane Eyre.

Oh my God, This could be Jane Eyre.

There could be a woman in the attic.

Misses Mullins could be in the attic.

I did say she was doing like a Miss Havisham situation.

Yeah, yeah.

So far off right?

I don't know.

So far off?

Absolutely.

The same thing.

Yeah, it's basically the same thing.

Diggings around the same time as brought is that?

Is that right?

Yeah, OK, OK.

Yeah, I don't think.

Like later, he came later, but they were in the same century.

It was the I guess in that sense it was the worst of times.

Other times but she should have been like.

A way that they could have made the child character stronger would be if Sister Charlotte had also been kind of a bitch.

Like if she had been like a mean nun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's great.

And then like one of the like, one of the girls could have risen up as like a heroic type to like try and band them all together.

Like maybe one of the Mean Girls could have turned out to be actually like a really heroic type of person.

Or Linda could have been a heroic type of person because she does like, she does do things to try and resolve the situation when no one else will.

But it's just kind of like it's not very effective.

Like it's not effectively performed.

It's not effectively written because it's just kind of, I don't know they they need any more passes at this at this script.

Yeah, well, the next morning Sister Charlotte brings Janice outside in her wheelchair to sit in the sun for a while.

The second, the absolute second that she's alone, something that looks like a nun but isn't, pushes Janice into a barn and tosses her chair away before the demon, looking like bee again, throws up black liquid into her mouth.

Gross.

Outside the barn, everyone hears Janice screaming, so they rush to the barn and find her perfectly fine, but Linda knows immediately something is wrong.

That night, Linda stays out on the front porch, and in the morning she talks with Samuel Mullins.

When she tells him that Janice found the doll in a white dress, he becomes incredibly upset.

He goes inside to confront the demon, but it kills Samuel.

The next night, Linda steals Annabelle from Janice and tosses her down a well.

Luckily, sister Charlotte followed Janice because something almost pulls Linda down the well after it.

When they arrive back at the house, Linda tries to tell Janice about what happened, but instead finds Annabelle under the covers.

When while the girls go look for Janice, Sister Charlotte goes to Esther for answers, who gives a bunch of back story, including that Bee's real name was, of course, Annabelle.

Oh my God.

OK, here.

I want to do this.

Samuel's death.

I loved I I hate all the story around it.

The narrative sucks, but I loved watching those little fingers be pulled back.

It it I like?

I like a finger pulled back.

Yeah, it was really good.

This is another moment where I had to have a pause and conversation with my brother because he was like, why is the crucifix not working?

And we we posited that because he clearly made this himself.

It wasn't actually blessed by a priest.

So this isn't like the Salem's Lot where two popsicle sticks is a cross.

You have to have it like real holy power behind it, but rules.

It's so good.

But they probably crucifix off them anyway.

I you know what that was for Excommunicate role.

I don't have time for that Catholic shit anymore.

I'm watching every Saw movie and writing essays about them.

I just love some fingers being pulled back.

That's all I'm here for.

My treasure.

David looked up.

David looked up this plot center.

He was like, fingers are getting pulled back.

We're talking about it this month.

Fuck yeah.

Yeah.

I do think like I wish Samuel's death was better though because the story around it like actually worsens this death scene for me.

I want to really like it because I think the idea of a demon forcing the fingers to go back in a really gruesome, grotesque way off the crucifix is cool as fuck.

But and then his body afterwards is all like grey.

It was like, yeah, you know, it's it's it's really good.

It looks cool.

But like he doesn't get any dialogue during this scene.

There's no like real moment where it's like an emotional catharsis.

And then as we said at the top, like there's no like creator created creation conflict that's happening here.

It all just feels so shallow and I end up really not liking it as a result.

Well, yeah, Marilyn, you mentioned this in the in the scene description, but like when they share with him that they found the doll, he goes from zero to 100 about Annabelle.

Yeah.

And that's when you're like, oh, no, it's the third act.

And we haven't revealed certain things about these characters.

Better force their motivations to see.

That's 100% it.

Unlike Speaking of Esther exposition.

Mullins did her God damn best.

But like that scene was insane.

OK, the best part is when she unmasks her scar looks, her scar makeup is fantastic.

I I loved that.

I thought it was just the right amount of gnarly to be cool.

I don't even need to know how you got it.

I assumed you got it from Annabelle.

Like I don't need to see the sequence of you getting attacked by Annabelle and now you have this scar.

So you wear this like porcelain doll mask over it.

Don't don't just be an idiot, but the rest of the like we summoned a demon so we can talk to our daughter.

A parent's love is eternal.

God, I just I don't care.

I don't care about that.

Show me the doll.

Yeah, even though it was Miranda Richardson who will always be Aon to me.

True, she'll made it a row.

She's fantastic, she's fantastic.

She does a great job, but it is still just like exposition time and it's like we could have seeded this throughout the movie.

We could have added some mystery to it because it also feels like the like when the the older girls, Nancy and Carol are having like their little scary story night it it's like they're trying to make it seem like, oh, Esther or, you know, whatever her name is, is.

Yeah.

They exclusively call her Missus Mullins, which is why I did the work.

And I added her name throughout the script as much as I could because I will not have a woman only be named after her husband.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So real.

Yeah.

Like they try to make Esther seem like, oh, maybe she's like the supernatural entity.

And it's like, no, we know it's fucking Annabelle.

We know it's.

She's named for the doll.

It's it's so funny to her because I did not clock her as her character from Lord of the Rings.

I truly and honestly didn't rock that connection.

And I really shouldn't have.

Because when she took that porcelain doll mask off and plunged a sword into Annabelle, she said I am no man.

And it was, it was a great moment.

The audience cheered.

And the thing?

Did we watch a different version of the?

Movie you did no fucking bad ass with that bad Annabelle.

No man can kill me.

It's nowhere to work.

It would have been so good, but yeah.

Give me that like weird ass like equivalent of reading a recipe book and accidentally getting the pages stuck together.

So I made a savory tart.

Yeah, Why?

Why?

I mean, I guess sometimes parody movies like Scary Movie will borrow from a lot of different genres, but we really just truly need like, the parody movie Spaceballs did a little bit.

We need like the parody movie that just takes a little bit from everything.

Yeah, I just, this whole sequence, I think, was very, very uneven.

And it goes back to that thing I was talking about earlier about how the movie couldn't decide if it wanted to focus on the Mullins or the girls, and because they didn't really pick.

We've got a lot of shit going on and it doesn't really come together in a way that's very satisfying.

But one thing I did find satisfying was that really gross conjuring call back where apparently being possessed looks like a demon vomiting in your mouth.

Glad that we know that now for sure.

Sure, and just like the television series Supernatural, we'll change those rules as the films go on.

But who cares?

You know, It's black smoke, it's evil, it's a demon.

Get used to it.

Upstairs, the girls find Janice with a knife.

Sister Charlotte goes to deal with her when the girls decide to get Missus Mullins out of the house as well.

Unfortunately, there's two.

They're too late.

She's been killed off screen.

Whatever.

Sister Charlotte is knocked out by some sort of telekinetic burst that's going on.

Because we're just, we're in act three.

It's Disc 3 Crazy.

Now.

Linda is separated from the group and the rest of the girls try to find safety outside, but instead they're stalked by the scarecrow that we saw earlier.

Inside the house.

Janice and the demon chase Linda around until eventually Sister Charlotte locks Janice in the secret room that once stored Annabelle, and they both escaped the house.

When the cops arrive, there's no sign of Janice.

At another orphanage, a couple, the Higgins, meet Janice, now going by the name Annabelle, which ties this movie directly into Annabelle 20.

14.

Totally nailed that ending.

Here's the deal.

Not a lot of horror movies do this, but every once in a while characters will make such a bad decision that I verbally must say no at the screen.

The most famous example of this?

Because I was in a theater.

I think to myself, if not by myself, that I wouldn't have been heard saying it out loud.

When in Gothica, Halle Berry was considering going into a giant abandoned farmhouse and I said no, no, no, and Halle Berry heard me through the film.

Except then she turned and walked into an abandoned barn, which was worse.

It was a worse decision.

Anyway, there are two points that this movie did this.

One was when Linda thought about going into the dumb waiter, which is a terrible idea.

And 2 is when the girls were thinking about going into the barn, also a bad idea.

And so good job movie for getting nose to come out of me in 2 scenes that you were telling in parallel.

Yeah, I, this whole sequence really bothers me.

I, I, I genuinely feel like the third act of this film is, is a bit of a let down.

I'm genuinely disappointed that Carol doesn't bite it.

Like she should have been killed by that bucket scarecrow.

Like, it's just a lot of sound and fury leading to nothing because the only people who died in this movie are the Mullins, and that's dumb.

Like, I'm sorry, I, I, I don't know what to tell you.

So if this movie was more about the girls, we could have really explored how Carol was like the mean girl leader who is like really causing a lot of problems with the orphans.

And then seeing her die to the scarecrow, which is something that she made fun of the other girls for being scared of earlier would have been really fun and satisfying.

But we don't even get that.

Well, and then without the Scarecrow actually having purpose, then why even have that scene?

Exactly.

Cut the 10 minutes of Is the light on her off?

Oh no, the light, which it was good.

It was visually interesting.

I do like lights on and off off bad, on good.

I've played a video game, yes, but it it's just you 2 hour runtime, 2 hour runtime.

We we could find some things to cut and Carol's whole thing in the barn could have, could have gone.

Could have gone.

It could have gone.

Unless we make the brave choice to kill Carol, in which case that would have been rad.

But no, we can't do that.

Was this movie rated R or was it PG13?

I have to assume R.

I'm on the Wikipedia page.

Hold on there's.

Like blood and shit.

Yeah, well, just because it's blood doesn't mean it's.

Depends on like the amount of blood and I'm thinking the finger scene at least must have made it an R rating.

But I'm kind of wondering like if they try to like keep it to a certain rating, maybe that's why they didn't kill Carol.

Yeah, I don't know where is it, why it is rated R so there's no reason why they shouldn't have killed her.

These fools.

This already earned its R rating.

Kill all the children.

I'm just saying.

You you killed a 12 year old at the beginning of the runtime.

Why is this 16 to 19 year old I?

Can't believe we were wondering if this was rated R that kill a child at the very beginning of the.

Like I said, we're doing great.

We're doing.

Great, they literally smash a child with a with a speeding truck.

Yeah, David cut all of this out.

No, no.

I will not expose our shame.

I.

Just all right.

Yeah, fine.

Expose our shame.

I will say as when I was a child around Linda's age, I also would have thought dumb waiter.

Cool.

And when to go hide in it.

Yeah, and now?

You know, a terrible idea.

A terrible idea for sure, but at least as a child I would have been like dumb waiter good.

Yeah, but today you know that like child, children go into that and never come back.

No, no.

And and like honestly, if the scene where she's in the dumb waiter is so fucking silly, like I this is another moment where I laughed at the silly demon effects because like again, sometimes the demon really works.

Seeing the the demon fingers like holding the dumb waiter down did not work for me.

I thought it was like silly to see that the hands are explicitly like that.

I just, I I did like, like Janice, like jumping up, like, and you could see her under there.

But I have the same thought as you did merrily with the fingers because, like, Linda just hits the demon's fingers with her flashlight.

And that works.

Yeah.

And it's like this demon is so powerful but it still could take physical blood damage.

Yeah, like he could peel the fingers off of a crucifix from another room away, but flashlight to the little fingies, Owie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also can we talk about Esther Mullins death for a second?

Because like she gets fucking bisected and like the top half of her body is like hung up on the wall.

That happens in three seconds and then we just don't pay attention to her again.

What is why?

Why?

She does come back briefly to send Linda into the dumb waiter, but that's it.

And it's just like her top half.

It's just, it's a, it's a lot of unnecessary choices that were being made here.

Like it feels like perhaps there was like some sort of time crunch or something to get this script out, but like, damn, I mean, these were really, really messy.

We we talked about this with the nun.

These were flying and there was probably a limited time to fix anything.

So once you were like, we can bisect a girl, they were like, great, thank God.

Yeah, chop off.

Screen thank.

God, and she's an adult.

She can work till 1:00 AM Let's go.

And can we can we talk about the Higgins of it all?

Because genuinely, this is one of my least favorite parts of the film.

The way that they decide that it has to tie back in to the first Annabelle movie, why that was.

Stupid, right?

That was so stupid.

No, no, I don't think it's stupid until you show scenes from the first Annabelle movie either.

Trust that your audience will get this.

Like showing Julia Louis Dreyfus in a Marvel film and being like, Hey, she's a pretty big deal that that that that bitch going to show up again and you just let the audience have it.

But to to show them and present them and be like, these are the Higgins is your new family.

And then to cut to like 19 years later, it's me from the beginning of the film.

Annabelle.

I'm Annabelle yo Dada, and I'm going to kill you with my drug addicts boyfriend.

I don't really remember.

They were cultists from the cult of the Ram, which is the demon that's been inside her the whole time.

Great, we'll see.

So you either trust the audience or you don't.

And you have to trust that there are people who are stupid like me that won't remember all this but will remember who the Higgins's are.

And so you just don't.

It.

It doesn't.

It doesn't ruin the film for me.

It just makes the last bite of the apple the worst bite I've had so far.

And you shouldn't do that, because this was otherwise a pretty good apple.

Yeah, it was fine.

It was totally fine.

Yeah, it was.

I think it was an apple with some soft spots, but it was otherwise edible.

Yeah, it was.

It's too big.

This this apple should have been entered in the State Fair.

You should not have served this apple.

To me, a human, this was like a show apple.

You could have cut this apple up a little bit more and given it to me with some peanut butter and it would have been great.

I would have been filled up for days off of this apple.

Genuinely, I don't need any more Apple.

No more Apple for me.

Instead I need to ask how did we feel about Annabelle Creation in terms of horror or queerness after our conversation?

And do you have any other final thoughts for this episode?

Yeah, I, I feel even better about the girls being sort of the queer coding of this one.

I don't think there's a queer reading on Annabelle.

I I mean, I like to sit and look pretty.

So maybe there is a queer reading of Annabelle because that's like my whole thing.

She is the personality hire of The Conjuring universe.

And so, yeah, I do kind of like that for her.

I do kind of like that for her.

But otherwise, this was just kind of too long.

But gorgeous, beautiful sets, love for the practicality of all of this.

Should I?

Should I kept that as the mainstay of the series?

Yeah, I, you know, I generally think this movie looks great.

I think if you turn your brain off it's perfectly fine.

It just, it could have been good if they had made like 2 changes on the fundamental level from the idea of the movie.

And it's kind of a bummer that instead of a really good movie, we just get kind of a fine one.

Yeah, kind of fine, kind of fine.

Yeah, I mean, for the longest time I thought The Conjuring mains main movies were going to be like the best ones after seeing all these things.

And then The Devil Made Me Do It comes out and that just totally throws the whole thing for a spin.

And now I have to see the last rites to determine if it's if it gets any better.

Let's do, but I don't know.

Let's do.

And I know there's some CGI.

There's some CGI.

There's some CGI, no?

Oh yeah, some CGI bullshit.

No unreasonably large basement though.

No, but OK, So listen, there's some CGI, but there's also some really incredible practical work with.

Yours.

There's good.

Practical.

Too.

There's good like the there's a mirror scene that's gonna like, knock your socks off.

It's really good.

Do I have to see the devil made me do it before I see last rites?

No, no.

No, no.

I mean the only this isn't like a Annabelle creation situation where I'm gonna be very confused by the ending because I didn't see Annabelle 2014.

No.

Do you know who the Warrens are?

Yeah, yeah, I've seen the 1st 2 the.

Most part the.

Part of the of Devil made me do it is to know that Ed had a heart attack, and so it's important to know that he has to be very careful with his health now.

Yeah, he old, Ed Warren old.

He is old, yeah.

That is one thing I remember at the Warrens when they were alive.

They were old, yes.

Oh my God.

Incredible.

And charlatans, but I digress.

Yeah, we're not talking about the real life Warrens.

That's a whole other can of worms we're simply not going to open right now in the last 10 minutes of our podcast.

Bonus bonus episode on the actual Warrens would be my pitch on that one.

I don't.

I don't need the general public knowing how I feel about these people.

You pay for that opinion.

Yeah, here, here's the high.

And short of it, we've covered a lot of things for this podcast.

Our discussion not meeting the runtime of a film is usually not a great sign for that film.

Nope.

We usually exceed the runtime of the of the feature films that we cover on POD.

And so again, I think if you know what, if you look at your podcast listening device and it says 90 minutes, great podcast episode, excellent amount of time for a film.

This one was two hours, just a little too long.

Yeah.

Well, thank you all so much for listening to this episode.

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For that bonus content, you get to hear us talk about our adventure from the North Pole to New York City as we watched the Jon Favreau film The Jon Favreau film Elf.

Plus for everyone, this isn't just for patrons.

We have been celebrating the 12 days of Sawmiss by looking at what Jigsaw Claws has brought down the chimney for all of us.

And this episode is releasing on the 15th.

So we are just about to wrap up Sawmiss.

You're about to find out what that secret 12th episode or essay is going to be about.

That'll be dropping for everyone on patreon.com/fear Coded Podcast, and you can read those essays whether you're a member for free or you you pay to help support queer artists like Marilee, Tyler and myself.

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And join us next time as we conclude Dulcember by getting into a dense battle with the newest doll on the block with 2022's Methreegan.

Megan Methreegan.

What do we actually say here?

This is a Megan.

Megan.

Yeah, but if I'm feeling fancy, I'll say Methreegan.

Yeah, it's it's truly a vibes based thing because I do both equally.

It's a vibes based movie so.

Megan Threegan.

Begin Threegan.

2022's Matugan.

Matugan, Why not?

You know what, For now, we will simply say goodbye.

Well, that was a great chance for me to take take a little segue and I didn't do it.

So you know what?

We're just going to live with it.

And evening tender darkness has the pain.

Annabelle, does the mirror believe your smile or see the?

Tone Annabelle is on the loose.

It's.

Coming to your TV's everywhere this fall do.

You know what I think I was trying to do with Thundercats?

Annabelle is on the run.

Annabelle is loose.

That's what I'm trying.

Thundercats.

Oh, OK, Well, that's the theme.

Thundercats.

Thundercats are on the move.

Thundercats are loose.

I love that.

Thank you so much, David.

Thank you for that.

This is all going, this is all going to the trap.

Except that like, things happen around her, she's proximal, proximal, proximity.

Things happen in her proximity proximal.

It's all staying in David.

Cut this out.

This is terrible.

Doesn't feel anymore her life.

The right takes got to be in there somewhere.