Sometimes a creepy-looking doll is just a creepy-looking doll and no amount of repetition can make the sweet old song You Are My Sunshine even the slightest bit scary.

The film exists simply to get us somewhere we've already been, and so the level of invention in the storytelling declines right when it should be ramping up.

For the first two acts, while Annabelle: Creation concerns itself with little girls checking under beds and investigating things that go bump in the night, it's equal to James Wan's Conjuring films.

Annabelle: Creation is one of the scarier films in the The Conjuring Universe, but like other films in the franchise, it lacks both a compelling plot and compelling characters in the absence of the Warrens.