10 Brilliant Horror Movie Concepts Not Taken Far Enough

In the opening seconds of 2013's The Conjuring, we were introduced to the terrifying Annabelle and fans rejoiced when she got her own film.

However the resultant film didn't take full advantage of the wonderfully creepy doll. Audiences were hoping for a film that told the long-toted Annabelle origins tale teased in The Conjuring's pre-credits scenes. This is the story of a group of young nurses tormented by the doll after one woman received it as a gift from her mother. Their story included instances of the doll moving around, possessing a medium, attacking a male visitor in the night and even causing a car accident. All of this would be wonderful fodder for a horror film, right?

But instead 2014's Annabelle opts to tell the story of a young, expectant couple in 1960s New York that come into possession on the titular doll. Unfortunately the film takes the puzzling step to use the terrifying Annabelle very sparingly, and instead fills its too long runtime with scares consisting of moving objects and creepy drawings. These are just not the hijinx fans imagined when hearing of an Annabelle spin-off movie and audiences felt quite let down that she seemed underused in her own film.

Annabelle's greatest sin is eschewing the creepy doll for an elongated scene wherein a CGI demon - Annabelle's true form - chases a young mother through an apartment block. The reliance on computer generated scares is baffling when the very thing audiences came to see should be the focus of the film. The entire movie just seems like the result of a very rushed process, but thankfully the sequels that followed are far superior with Annabelle front and centre.