'Annabelle Comes Home' VR Experience Lets You Explore The Warren Artifact Room

Annabelle Comes Home hits theaters later this month. But before the haunted doll unleashes even more terror in the household of Ed & Lorraine Warren, you can explore their infamous artifact room, full of items tied to all sorts of evil entities, demons, spirits and more. You can get a glimpse at the new Annabelle Comes Home VR experience below. Just make sure you don't touch anything.

The video walks through the entire artifact room, allowing you to look at the dozens of items the Warrens have accumulated from their various paranormal investigations over the years. Any one of them could spin off into their own franchise, just like Annabelle or The Nun.

As you move through the room, there are also ominous sounds all around you, including a certain music box that fans will recognize instantly. But of course the real problem is that Annabelle opens the case keeping her locked up and disappears when the lights go out. After that, things get even creepier as the lights start flickering and noises amp up.

There's a lot of potential for horror experiences in VR, and this is a decent example of what can be done. But it's also a little too simple. There needs to be more interaction with the environment. While that might cost more money that doesn't necessarily need to be spent when VR is only being used for a movie's marketing, it shows that there needs to be some more engagement in this medium in order for audiences to take notice.

As the first trailer for Annabelle Comes Home revealed, the Warren artifact room gets a visitor who stupidly touches a bunch of items, bringing even more evil into the rest of the house, and that's on top of Annabelle herself. Here's the official synopsis:

Determined to keep Annabelle from wreaking more havoc, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren bring the possessed doll to the locked artifacts room in their home, placing her "safely" behind sacred glass and enlisting a priest's holy blessing.  But an unholy night of horror awaits as Annabelle awakens the evil spirits in the room, who all set their sights on a new target—the Warrens' ten-year-old daughter, Judy, and her friends.

Is it just me or does it seem weird that the concept of unleashing the evil of the artifact room feel like it would have been better suited for The Conjuring's main franchise instead of an Annabelle sequel? Sure, the doll is a good catalyst for that concept, but she was already rather menacing on her own. Will this have any impact on The Conjuring 3 at all? We'll have to wait and see.

Annabelle Comes Home is directed by franchise writer Gary Dauberman, and it hits theaters on June 28, 2019.