Movie Review: Annabelle: Creation

While this still turned out to be a tightly executed horror thriller, Annabelle: Creation still felt like an unnecessary prequel to a prequel of The Conjuring. Sure, the mood and the atmosphere created, for the most part, were both eerie and disturbing and the jump scares were incredibly effective, but that was also the film's main problem - it just wasn't anything more than that. Instead of the more potent slow-burn dread, it resorted on hitting the audience with cheap thrills, especially towards the second half, that were akin to the genre's junk food and it lost steam as soon as the entity manifested. Any genuine tension or fear was lacking and that came off a tad lazy compared to The Conjuring, which had well-crafted sequences. Look, watching Annabelle: Creation was deeply stressful and exhausting with all the scare tricks it delivered, but I was really hoping for a genuinely increasing terror or swooping fright that would linger on me. It just wasn't there. Sadly.