Much like its 2018 predecessor, The Nun II plays out like an old-school horror effort from the 1960s, only this time a little less creatively imaginative and tonally unhinged.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is a rather forgettable entry in the ever-expanding Conjuring universe and the only film featuring Ed and Lorraine Warren as the central characters I’ll never willingly choose to return to.

This third trip into the horrifying unknown with Ed and Lorraine Warren is a tedious bit of supernatural déjà vu, all of which has me starting to wonder if maybe it’s time for this series to give up the ghost and call it a day.

As much as I enjoyed that second adventure with the evil titular doll, Annabelle Comes Home is such a massive amount of sinister fun it might be my favorite entry in The Conjuring universe outside of the first film.

The Curse of La Llorona is a massive missed opportunity that failed to maintain my interest, this latest entry in producer James Wan’s spookily successful ghost story universe conjuring up a profound sense of disappointment that left me dejectedly frustrated.

Much like last year’s Ouija: Origin of Evil was a prequel that proved to be a monumentally massive improvement over its anemic low budget horror predecessor Ouija, Annabelle: Creation somehow, some way bucks the odds and proves to be a superior motion picture to its woeful 2014 precursor Annabelle.

The Conjuring 2 could be better, there’s no denying that. It’s too long and gets too frenzied as it reaches its climax, never digging as deeply under the skin as the first film did. But Wan knows what he is doing, and more often than not this sequel offers up enough in the way of thrills and chills to satisfy.

Yet it is that climax which truly sinks this prequel, Annabelle in the end only conjuring up my anger and vitriol that it would do something so horrifically stupid and think that would be okay.

Made with style, imagination, confidence and panache, [The Conjuring (2013)] gets under the skin right away and then stays there for the remainder of its innervating 112 minutes, building to a solidly sinister and unsettling finale that had the audience I watched it with on collectively disquieted pins and needles.