Confused


As shown in The Conjuring, this demon told the school nurses it was the spirit of a girl named Annabelle Higgins, a 7 year old girl who supposedly died in the apartment these school nurses were inhabiting. Ed Warren, however, told these nurses that Annabelle Higgins never existed. Yet, the prequel to this movie, Annabelle, shows that Annabelle Higgins was real. Maybe Ed Warren was wrong.

So it turns out that Annabelle Higgins was a young woman who ran away to join a satanic cult, whose right of passage was for her to murder her own parents. After killing her parents, she set her sights on her parents' neighbors who had the doll, but was gunned down by police before she could get to the neighbors. Before she died, however, she performed a ritual on the doll that allowed it to be used as a conduit by a Demon? For what reason would Annabelle Higgins have to do this? Did she think she was transferring her soul into the doll?

But now, this new prequel, Annabelle: Creation, is saying that the doll was created by a man named Samuel Mullins, who had a daughter that died about a decade or two prior (I sarcastically wonder what her name was), and at that point the doll was already possessed, and starts attacking a group of sheltered orphans living in Mullins' house. So, there was no point for the ritual Annabelle Higgins would do years later because the doll was already possessed. So, that would mean the plot of Annabelle is pointless, story-wise.

And I didn't think the bad continuity of the Puppet Master series couldn't be replicated.

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Yep. They're rewriting history in a way they can most ably extort more consumers out of their money. They figure the people who love these sorts of movies are by and large too stupid to make the connection you just made. For every one of me and you there are 100 teenagers who gobble this stuff up just like they gobble up Transformers and Fast and Furious.

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Hey now. I'm almost 30 and I still watch Fast & Furious. But I notice a lot of errors in the timeline. Pretty sure that a few years went by between the events of the 6th and 7th movie, so I don't know how in the 8th that Vin Diesel's character can have a son with the woman he was with at the end of 5 and beginning of 6, especially when the son/baby is less than a year old. Unless they SORAS'd Paul Walker's character's son in 7. But even when The Rock was explaining Jason Statham's character's background in 7 and mentioning Statham's brother, it sounded like 3-4 years went by. PLUS Paul Walker's character's son is born at the start of 6, aged a few months when we see the baby next later on in the movie, and then in 7 Paul Walker is taking him to school. The kid is even speaking and walking around and looks to be 4-6 age range.

Also, when I went to see Fast & Furious 8, most of the other people in the theater were my age and older. Definitely quite a few over the age of 50, maybe 60. So it's not teens going to see these movies still. And teens are NOT the ones making up a majority of those watching them.

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I'm 21, and this is something I've gotten more confused about growing up, now that I'm noticing errors involving timelines and logic in film and television. It's confusing in the sense how not only I have missed certain errors, but how MANY others have missed them as well, and these errors don't have impact on people's opinions of the stuff they love when it impacts me. So, are we supposed to not let these errors have impact on our views on Film and TV, or were we ALL too immersed in the product that we keep letting these errors to continue with each passing episode or film?

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Yeah you're right. And most of those audience members were ignorant black people in the theater drunk/high and screaming at the movie screen telling the child characters what to do and calling them bitches yet getting scared whenever the doll was shown.
It was the worst movie experience I've ever had. I walked out after the scene where the police are called out to the house.

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I never saw Annabelle, but did see Conjuring 1, so I knew I was missing something with the whole doll plot.

What bothers me is that the demon posing as the Mullins daughter was locked away inside the doll, inside a cupboard lined with bible pages so it could never get out. So how was it able to run around the house freely and leave notes like the girl did when alive?

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In Annabelle: Creation, a demon tricks Annabelle Mullins' parents into letting it inhabit a doll made by Samuel Mullins. Towards the end, the demon moves into orphan Janice's body. After the police arrive, the priest even says that the doll is now just a doll. It is not possessed at this point. We then learn at the end of the movie that Janice, possessed by the demon, gets adopted by the Higgins' and is going by the name Annabelle. When she grows up, she murders her parents who are, at this point, the neighbors of John and Mia from the first Annabelle movie. For some reason she then runs into John and Mia's house and is gunned down. After she is gunned down, the demon transfers back into the doll via her blood-- as seen in the first Annabelle movie.

Why John and Mia picked up the same doll (or a copy of one of these limited edition dolls) that was once inhabited by a demon who happens to live in the body of the adopted girl next door... I'm not sure. Maybe that part is just a great coincidence.

As for the nurses, the demon lied (as demons do) about being the spirit of a girl who died in their apartment complex. Ed Warren probably determined (correctly) that no one named Annabelle Higgins ever lived in the complex.

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Seriously? Wow, that's a whole lot of retcon.

Annabelle Higgins is not actually the Higgins REAL daughter, but their adoptive daughter?

This doll that was involved at a crime scene, in which two people were killed, and this doll, that is no longer being used as a conduit anymore, somehow ends up going back into a shop as a rare collector's item when it should be considered to be evidence. I know it's the late 50s, but seriously, for those of you who were from the 1950s or know a lot about how police work was conducted in this time period, did we seriously not take anything like witness statements into account when they say "The doll" had a huge impact on what occurred at the house?

So the demon is possessing Janice. It got what it wanted, and goes into hiding by changing her name to Annabelle. She gets adopted by the Higgins, and grows up into a teenager. Right there is another plot for another movie in this Conjuring universe, a film covering about a decade lifespan from kid to teenager. Hell, it could be called "We Need to Talk About Annabelle". Only difference is, she doesn't kill her parents before the massacre. You probably thinking "The Higgins never mentioned anything about a school massacre", and my response would be "Yeah, but they never mentioned her being adopted neither. So who cares?"

So, after spending twelve years of supposedly doing nothing (until that We Need to Talk About Kevin ripoff film comes out), Janice runs away to join a cult that seeks to summon a demon to claim a soul. Wouldn't Janice just raise her hand and be like "Mission Accomplished. I'm a demon who claimed a soul?" Or did this cult know that and they were trying to seek ANOTHER demon to claim soul?

And how fricking coincidental is it that more than a decade later, when the possessed Janice has her back up against a wall and facing either death penalty or life imprisonment, she's like "Ah f***, I got to do this doll s*** again?! Alright." Slit.

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Yes seriously. It's really quite simple. Whether or not you think it's a good story is something different. :)

Annabelle Higgins is not actually the Higgins REAL daughter, but their adoptive daughter


Yes, that's what I said.

...a film covering about a decade lifespan...

Yes. This is consistent for both families. In this film, the Mullins' said that things had been relatively quiet for about 12 years. Then, after Janice/Annabelle is adopted by the Higgins', it cuts to her murder spree 12 years later. There's probably some significance to that but I don't know what it is. Perhaps there actually is some sort of dormancy. This might answer Foebane's question about how the doll could run around leaving notes when she was locked in the closet with the bible pages. Maybe she was never trapped at all but dormant instead? I don't know and don't really care. All I was saying was that there was no inconsistency between The Conjuring, Annabelle, and Annabelle Creation.

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True. There are films that retcon previous events, but still manage to be good. I'm still not sure how I feel about this one though.

You actually bring up a good point. I forgot about the whole 12 years dormant thing. There probably is some significance to that, and would answer if the demon was still possessing Janice for twelve years or not. Although, it wouldn't explain how Janice's polio was cured. So, I guess the demon would have to still be possessing her, but not being as noticeable, I guess.

Sorry if my previous post came out a bit critical. Retcons in film or television irk me when they happen, and especially when its from the same writer as the previous installment, it kind of makes my blood boil for some reason.

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Here is what I would like to believe about the dormant thing. Maybe it's dormant for 12 years(between when they adopt annabelle/janice) in the sense that she is not a crazed demon like in this movie. I would guess though that all the child's life there was something strange about her and that deaths and weird things happened around her but no proof. On the one hand things happened around her but on the other hand she could turn around and act like a sweet little girl. So basically she had the Higgins fooled most of the time. Hell I am sure when she ran off to join the cult her parents knew nothing of the danger they just thought she was doing the hippy thing of that time by wanting to live cut off with a group of people. If you consider the year she murdered her parents it was the year of the Manson family but they assumed she was not connected with anything like that. From what I have read and heard in the late sixties there were hippies that would live in groups together but were not necessarily dangerous. They just thought Annabelle was doing that and were of course surprised when she came to kill them.

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I just saw it a n hour ago and at the end it says this is fiction.;..WHAT? It hardly is...also,I was surprised how real old fashioned it is, even for a 1970s setting. Except for a black girl with a kind of afro there's no other way that this seems as recent as thew 1970s..very good and scary though..

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Hi I'm glad I found some one else confused. I've been searching for answers about the films !!! My take now is.
Annabelle creation .... as everyone's written,Mullins doll is possessed by a demon who took on the persona of their daughter, attacking the mother. Janice gets possessed so doll is now dormant (she's cured from polio because Janice is effectively dead and now just a vessel for the demon) Janice/Annabelle is adopted by the Higgins who she later kills and transfers her soul back into the doll.
Annabelle.... at the end of the movie the doll needs another soul so the shop lady throws herself out of window with the doll. Yes you'd think it would be held in evidence but I think they trashed it and it later ended up in a thrift store where the nurses mother bought it for her. Remember the doll looks more aged and evil as the films go on.
The conjuring.... at the start the nurses say 7 yr old Annabelle died in the apartment so they felt sorry for her,technically it's true as the persona of the demon has always been Annabelle Mullins, who died when she was 7 yrs old, to Janice to Annabelle Higgins .
Only thing confusing is if the shop lady had given her soul to the doll, where did she go !!!!!

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