Camilla: What’s an inhuman spirit?

Ed Warren: It’s something that’s never walked the Earth in human form. It’s something demonic.

That’s from the opening scene of The Conjuring. Ed Warren is explaining to a couple of freaked out med students that their doll, Annabelle, is possessed by a demon. I wonder what Ed might make of this trailer for Annabelle, which suggests the doll came to be haunted as a result of a double homicide. I’m sure this continuity discrepancy will get twisted like a pretzel until the origin somehow resembles what Ed said. Or Ed’s a moron who misread the situation. At the end of the day, this is a prequel to a short story about a creepy doll, so the filmmakers can explain everything during their many acceptance speeches next awards season.

It’ll be interesting to see how long a shadow The Conjuring casts. I don’t think Deliver Us From Evil gets a Summer release date without it. And aside from this being a prequel/sidequel, you can already see echoes in the marketing, using what’s essentially a single scene to sell the film, just like The Conjuring did with its first trailer. At least they didn’t try to call this The Conjuring: Annabelle, though there’s still a few months before the October, anything could happen, I guess.

As for the trailer itself, it’s not doing a whole lot for me. I liked The Conjuring, though I didn’t have the visceral reaction a lot of people did. This looks a shade paler, even in what’s admittedly early footage. Let’s reserve full judgement for a second trailer, shall we?