Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a doll maker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the doll maker's possessed creation—Annabelle.
Annabelle: Creation is a competent but formulaic horror prequel. Director David F. Sandberg brings genuine craft to individual scare sequences and the cinematography has some effective use of shadow and space, but the overall visual language is fairly standard haunted-house fare. The acting is serviceable, with Talitha Bateman delivering a committed child performance that elevates the material. The plot, however, is thin and derivative—essentially a series of escalating possession set-pieces strung together with minimal character development, following the well-worn haunted-location template closely. Novelty is low given it occupies crowded prequel-origin-story territory within the Conjuring universe, recycling familiar beats. The ending ties into Annabelle (2014) in a way that feels obligatory and unsatisfying rather than earned, existing primarily to justify the franchise connection rather than conclude its own story meaningfully.