It’s bad because you can never quite traverse the landscape of the movie’s internal logic. The only thing that is strictly adhered to is the concept that the doll cannot move. That’s pretty much all there is in terms of plot, and, even within that basic framework, there’s not a whole lot of attention paid to specific rules or signposts. As you can imagine, things start to go bump in the night almost from the get-go, and, little by little, more of the doll’s origins are revealed. Twelve years later, in an effort to bring girlish life back to their home, they invite several orphans and a nun, Sister Charlotte ( Stephanie Sigman), to live in their rambling farmhouse.

Since this is set before the events of “Annabelle” (which occur before the events of “The Conjuring”), “Annabelle: Creation” is set some time ago (let’s say the late ’40s), with a doll maker named Samuel Mullins ( Anthony LaPaglia) and his wife Esther ( Miranda Otto) suffering the tragic loss of their young daughter (wait for it) Annabelle ( Samara Lee). (And, it should be noted, this is coming from someone who hated the original.) More surprising than the expanded ‘Conjuring’ franchise is how fulfilling and fun “Annabelle: Creation” really is. The latest film, in what parent company New Line is now definitively referring to as a shared ecosystem of interlocking parts, is “ Annabelle: Creation,” a kind of prequel-to-the-prequel that digs deeper into the origins of that possessed plaything. More shocking than anything in the actual movie, though, was how it blossomed into its own mini universe, complete with a sequel and a small constellation of spin-offs, the first of which (“ Annabelle,” centered around the demonic doll from the first film) debuted in 2014 and made $256 million on a budget of $6.5 million.

When “ The Conjuring” was released in the summer of 2013, it felt like a charming one-off – a deliberately old school and deeply chilling horror romp inspired by true events that placed as much emphasis on characterization as it did on crazy supernatural weirdness.

Annabelle 2 review