INTO THE DARK: UNCANNY ANNIE

Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie Movie Review

A group of college students celebrate Halloween by staying home to play a board game called "Uncanny Annie"--picture Jumanji, only a lot more sinister. This is the first episode of the second season of the Hulu series Into the Dark, and if you have read the couple other reviews I have done of this series, you know I'm not watching or reviewing them in any order at all--this doesn't matter, as each episode stands alone. Back to this episode--our gang of nerdy gamers discover this game in their basement, and having never known of it before, decide to check it out. They find that to win, they must complete tasks one at a time to spell out the name "Annie"--if they fail, they come face to face with evil, including the gal the game is named for.

Here she is now!

This movie pulls off the rare feat of making the college-aged characters somewhat likable from the start, building a bit of (gasp!) depth to them. Unfortunately, once the action gets going, the students--who have already been established as legit geniuses--devolve into profanity-dropping dopes. When I reviewed a different episode of Into the Dark recently, I explained how this shows a lack of creativity from the writers and why this is not effective--while the characters in this episode didn't rely on this one word as much as the characters in that episode did, it was distracting nonetheless when they did and it really helped kill what was building up to be a very good movie. As is the case with all the Into the Dark episodes, there is some comedy thrown in, but there was less here than in the other episodes I have watched to this point. The games the characters must play are fun, and while not overly scary, there are some creepy moments. Annie herself looks eerie enough, but the overuse of sound effects with the character take away from that. There are some twists and turns along the way, and the ending is a decent one. Of the handful of Into the Dark episodes I have watched so far, this one is the best...that's really not saying much. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6

Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie Movie Trailer