Lulu Wilson and friend (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Even if you know what’s coming, director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) sets up effective jump scares in Annabelle: Creation, the latest installment of a expanding cinematic universe that began with The Conjuring in 2013.

It begins sometime in the 1940s with doll maker Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia) putting the finishing touches on a limited edition creation for his beloved little girl. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes and the girl is killed in a terrible accident. 12 years later, Mullins and his wife, still mourning for the child they lost, have opened up their home to a group of orphans cared for by Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman), who has recently spent some time at a convent in Romania (pay attention to this detail).

The older orphaned girls form a clique that excludes Janice (Talitha Bateman , a younger girl crippled by polio. Her only friend is Linda (Lulu Wilson), a supportive girl her own age. Still, while the other girls go out to play, Janice is left to her own devices in the Mullins’ huge home, and mysterious messages direct her to enter a forbidden room with a locked closet that for some reason holds a strange-looking doll.

There are more than enough jump scares to please anyone who was disappointed by the previous films in the series, and it continues the tradition of strong, fluid camerawork that has characterized the the films since The Conjuring. But it lacks the thoughtful character development that ran through Annabelle (2014) and The Conjuring 2 (2016), films that disappointed many fans of Wan’s original vision. (I found them both excellent). Like the original Conjuring, those films were slow burns that meted out their horror, and that restraint and thoughtful plotting instilled a sense of dread that lingered long after the final jump scare.

Annabelle: Creation is frightening, but it’s a fear that doesn’t linger. Aside from the Mullins, whose arc is introduced and then ignored for much of the film, the characters are not as well developed as in the previous films. For the most part, the film plays out as if you threw a bunch of orphans in a haunted house—a really effectively scary haunted house.

The movie ends with two post-credits sequences, one of which previews the expansion of this dark universe. Spin-off films are planned for the creepy nun in Conjuring 2 and The Crooked Man, and Conjuring 3 is also in development. Although an effective thriller, Annabelle: Creation is the weakest of the series, but it’s still worth seeing as another piece of the puzzle in a well-crafted, complex horror franchise.

Annabelle: Creation
Directed by David F. Sandberg
Written by Gary Dauberman
With Stephanie Sigman, Miranda Otto, Lulu Wilson
Rated R for violence and terror
109 minutes
Opens today at area theaters.