Among horror franchises, “The Conjuring” and “The Conjuring 2” are among the smartest, and scariest, titles on the shelf — while their spinoff siblings, the idiotic “Annabelle” and the new and slightly sharper “Annabelle: Creation,” have labored to catch up.
As the title implies, “Annabelle: Creation” is a prequel, providing the origin story to the creepy doll that channeled a demon (and a Mansonlike cult) to ’70s suburbanites in the first movie. The prologue starts somewhere around 1950, with a kindly dollmaker, Sam Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia), his loving wife, Esther (Miranda Otto), and their cute-as-a-button daughter, Bee (Samara Lee).