With his excitability, thinned-out physique, heavy regional dialect, and seemingly lid-less popping eyes – plus a makeup job (or computer touch-up in post-production) making him look a good decade younger than his actual 36 years – Jake Gyllenhaal starts this inspirational drama acting up a storm. To Green's and the actor's immense credit, though, it winds up downgraded to a persistent yet subtle rainfall, with the occasional gusts, when they hit, feeling intensely earned. It's an Oscar Bait role, but Gyllenhaal doesn't give an Oscar Bait performance – merely an exceptional, Oscar-deserving one.

Muschietti's achievement is most assuredly a great time, and succeeds as well as it does primarily because the film pulls off a high-risk trick that precious few works in this genre ever do: It manages to be just as funny as it is scary. It may even be funnier than it is scary, and It is awfully freakin' scary.

Written and directed by Hell or High Water author Taylor Sheridan, Wind River is another regionally specific crime saga – this one set in a Native American reservation in Wyoming – and it stars Jeremy Renner as a federal wildlife officer and Elizabeth Olsen as an FBI agent. The casting alone makes Sheridan's latest, like, one-tenth of an Avengers movie. But this fantastically smart, supremely entertaining thriller proves that Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch can perform super-heroics even without the benefit of colorful monikers, otherworldly abilities, and CGI. Sheridan clearly can, too.

David F. Sandberg's horror prequel isn't terrible. In truth, it's considerably better than the creepy-porcelain-doll antics of 2014's dreadful Annabelle. It's even an improvement over last summer's The Conjuring 2, whose 2013 precursor gave us our first look at the franchise's titular “character”: a house-dressed Chucky with dead eyes and blond braids. But while it would be easy to over-praise this genre outing merely for not sucking, Annabelle: Creation still emerges as only moderately effective at best – a late-summer chiller that finds a demonically possessed plaything the only truly believable thing about it.