Annabelle has competition in this wide-eyed terror. The third movie in the Indonesia Doll franchise, Sabrina is a paranormal haunted house movie, plus an exorcism movie, plus a martial arts knife fight movie. It’s everything, and the center are those big eyes.
Scrolling through Netflix horror movies, Sabrina looks like yet another film about a haunted doll — a really creepy one (those eyes!), but another in a long tradition. Yet the movie has its twists; along with echoing Annabelle, the Indonesian horror film also evokes the couple-hunting-demons dynamic of The Conjuring, and in its best moments, piercing the cultural particulars of the setting, serves as a horror version of Crazy Rich Asians.
Sabrina is actually the third instalment in The Doll franchise, which follows a psychic named Laras (Sara Wijayanto). Netflix isn’t advertising that because previous viewing isn’t required — but apparently there’s a booming market for psychics in the franchise’s version of Indonesia, as Laras keeps getting called to investigate dolls possessed by evil entities.
After a creepy opening involving a man searching for his wife (who he eventually finds suspended mid-air outside the house), Sabrina picks up with Maira (Luna Maya), previously seen in The Doll 2, in which the loss of her husband and only child led her to communicate with the spirit that ended up possessing the first version of the Sabrina doll. She is now married to another businessman and toymaker, Aiden (Christian Sugiono), who is launching version two of the Sabrina doll.
Together they’re caring for Aiden’s niece Vanya (Richelle Georgette Skornicki) after the loss of her parents. In her grief, Vanya is convinced by a classmate to play the Charlie challenge to try and summon her mother’s spirit.
