As a fan of the Warrens and of course The Conjuring franchise (I loved The Nun), I was very much looking forward to this film. I enjoyed the previous films featuring the demented Annabelle doll and hoped that this one would be every bit as creepy as Annabelle: Creation, if not moreso.

Well, while I enjoyed this film, I fell that it was much more tame than the previous chapters of the Annabelle story, and certainly lighter than the main Conjuring films, and not nearly as frightening as The Nun, which I feel was the most extreme of the lot thus far. For one thing, it's a standard haunted house film. We've seen these many times before. The plot is formulaic and as you'd expect, it involves a baby-sitter, her friend, and of course a young innocent girl who is the pin that holds everything together. This chapter of the series was no more frightening than an episode of Goosebumps. There wasn't any gore nor any deaths. The characters spent 95% of the film running around a house, screaming, and trying to escape from, and contain, various spirits and ghosts under the lead of Annabelle, the creepy looking doll. The room that the Warrens used to imprison all of their haunted items looks like an old curio shop you'd find along the Atlantic City boardwalk and for a room so full of evil and terror, the most that emerged from it were shrieking ghouls, random things dropping from shelves, or various knick-knacks turning on and off by themselves. It just didn't feel frightening enough. Annabelle, who is imprisoned inside a glass box with big giant sign stuck to it reading, "Warning Positively Do Not Open" is supposed to contain the most malevolent demon spirit that the Warrens have ever encountered. Yet the most that it does is appears seated in rocking chairs or lying under a bed in a room somewhere. If this thing was so evil (apparently more than Valak the Demon Nun?) surely it would have done more than just frightening kids with harmless apparitions. Overall, I don't feel like this film deserved an R-rating. It just wasn't scary. It felt like a filler in the timeline to move the franchise along to it's next major entry.