The most underrated entry in a major horror franchise spooks Netflix viewers

The horror genre suffers from the law of diminishing returns more than most, so it’s a testament to the key creatives that the Conjuring Universe has remained pretty solid in terms of critical and audience reactions, even if there’s been a couple of minor blips along the way.

To date, the eight installments have earned in excess of $2.1 billion at the box office to become firmly established as the highest-grossing series of scary movies ever made, so the brand can always be relied on to draw in a crowd. Fans often debate which entry can be deemed as the best, and there’s definitely a case to be made for David F. Sandberg’s Annabelle: Creation.

A $306 million haul and a 71% Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t put it in the upper echelons of the Conjuring Universe, but it’s one of the saga’s most effective chillers nonetheless. On paper, the prequel to a spinoff from a movie that claimed to be inspired by true events sounds creatively bankrupt, but Sandberg makes it work.

As per FlixPatrol, Annabelle: Creation is currently the third most-watched title on Netflix among customers in the United States, who’ve clearly been spending their late nights watching a creepy doll terrorize a farmhouse populated by a pair of grieving parents, a nun and six orphaned children.