In the 2010s, a shared universe madness overtook the film industry. Awestruck by the Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut, one studio after another tried to replicate its success—and mostly failed spectacularly, from Universal’s one-and-done Dark Universe, which sputtered out after Tom Cruise’s The Mummy, to Sony’s never-to-be attempt to create an MCU-like take on Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Efforts that did make it beyond a single entry often hit choppy waters, as evidenced by DC’s ever-shifting approach to its superhero movies. The MCU model, a cinematic project with many branches but shared roots, has proven tough to replicate. But it’s a model that’s found success in an unlikely place: a shadowy corner of the film world filled with witches, demonic spirits, dubious theology, and some remarkable vintage clothing.
The horror film The Conjuring didn’t seem like the sort of movie destined to produce two sequels — The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, in theaters and on HBO Max June 4, is the latest — and five spin-off movies (and counting) when it debuted in the summer of 2013. In fact, it was hard to know how it fit into that year’s summer movie season, one largely defined by mammoth-scaled action films (Pacific Rim, Man of Steel, Iron Man 3), almost-as-mammoth-scaled comedies (The Heat, This is the End), and big-budget animated features (Monsters University, Despicable Me 2). What chance did a movie about a haunted house starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga—respected actors whose names hardly guaranteed box office success—have ?
Though it didn’t even rate a mention in several major publications’ summer movie previews, The Conjuring proved to be the right film at the right time — in part because its director helped create the conditions for its success. Alongside his frequent collaborator Leigh Whannell, James Wan first put his stamp on 21st century horror movies with 2004’s Saw, a film whose emphasis on extended scenes of anguish and graphic violence helped usher in an era of what would be known as “torture porn,” an approach that would dominate mainstream horror films in the ’00s. Then, with the low-budget, independently produced 2010 film Insidious, Wan and Whannell attempted a back-to-horror-basics return to innocence. Directed by Wan and scripted by Whannell , Insidious put the emphasis on suggestion and scares via a haunted house story driven by atmosphere and style, marrying the minimalism of found-footage films like Paranormal Activity — — with meticulous craftsmanship and acting, from leads Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, that gave the story emotional weight.
A success with critics and moviegoers, Insidious’ influence could soon be felt in other movies. And though Wan and Whannell released a sequel in t2013, it’s Wan’s The Conjuring that plays like the logical next step. Released by the New Line branch of Warner Bros. in July, it transplants Insidious’ mix of supernatural menace, moments of prolonged tension, and stylish eruptions of controlled chaos to a bigger canvas. The jump in scale allows Wan to indulge his love of Steadicam shots that sweep through scary enclosed spaces alongside Insidious-like moments that invite viewers to fear the horrors they can’t quite see lurking behind doors or at the foot of the basement stairs. In bare description it might not seem like a film designed to compete for the attention of summer moviegoers being thrown one blockbuster after another, but it plays like one. And it earned like one—The Conjuring made $319.5 million against a $20 million budget, and taken together with the ensuing films, the franchise has grossed an estimated $1.9 billion.
In terms of its cinematic universe, the first Conjuring is effectively both Iron Man and Iron Man 2, serving as the film that sets the template for all subsequent entries to follow and the one that gets serious about laying the groundwork for all manner of follow-ups and tie-ins. The Conjuring gets the latter out of the way early, wasting little time introducing Annabelle, a possessed doll investigated and claimed by self-described demonologist Ed Warren (Wilson, again) and his clairvoyant wife Lorraine (Farmiga). The Warrens give it pride of place in a basement room dedicated to the haunted, cursed, or otherwise supernaturally troubled items they’ve encountered in the course of their investigations. Though so far only Annabelle has starred in a film of her own (three, to be precise), each item could anchor a movie: the samurai helmet, the clanging monkey toy… take your pick. They’re all scary looking and invite speculation about how they got there.
More crucial to the franchise’s long-term success, The Conjuring also established a style and tone its successors could follow. While some directors have had better results than others in imitating Wan’s stylistic bravado (he’s missed behind the camera in The Devil Made Me Do It), each subsequent film has nailed The Conjuring’s deadly earnest and unfailingly pious treatment of the paranormal. Set between the years 1952 and 1981 (and filled with period-appropriate fashion and design touches), the films take place in a universe in which malevolent entities prey on the weak and innocent, one in which only faith in God (and the help of a friendly pair of supernatural investigators) can repel the demonic hordes. Always one step away from turning into faith-based entertainment, they’re horror movies with little in the way of subtext. Evil doesn’t come from temptation and moral failings; it comes from witches and demons that try to kill you in the night. A moral simplicity suitable for Sunday School teachers not averse to giving their pupils nightmares doesn’t translate into thematically complex or sophisticated films, but it does translate to mass audiences.
Evil is counterbalanced, in the mainline Conjuring films, by the Warrens, depicted as exemplars of goodness and connubial bliss. Based on lurid accounts that surfaced as part of an ongoing legal dispute that’s raged around the series, that seems to be as removed from reality as, well, ghosts and demons. But the Warrens of the Conjuring films serve as beacons fighting the darkness around them, people of faith who’ve earned the trust of the Catholic church and regularly help rid the world of evil spirits with the church’s help. Wilson and Farmiga are charming and believably loving as mom-and-pop business owners who just happen to be in the business of casting out satanic entities.
Before The Conjuring, the real-life Ed (who died in in 2006) and Lorraine Warren (who died in 2019) were best-known for their connection to the “incidents” that inspired The Amityville Horror, but their history with the supernatural both predates and supersedes it. As founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research and keepers of a now-shuttered occult museum, their case files have provided inspiration, direct or otherwise, for each of the franchise’s entries. They may have been naifs or charlatans or some combination of the above, but Wilson and Farmiga play them as reverent and learned warriors for God, and their unwillingness to wink or condescend makes their fictional counterparts convincing no matter what manner of weirdness they encounter. Wilson and Farmiga have stuck around for each sequel and cameoed in some of the tie-in films, but the sincerity and conviction they create together resonates even in the films in which they don’t appear.
However low the franchise’s ceiling might be, it also features a pretty high floor. Like MCU movies, even the worst entries in the Conjuring universe are still pretty enjoyable. 2014’s Annabelle, felt a bit like a quickie follow-up, but the series righted itself with The Conjuring 2 in 2016, which opens with the Warrens visiting the famed Amityville home then traveling to London to deal with a poltergeist. Their investigation also scares up two franchise-worthy foes: a demonic nun (subject of the 2018 film The Nun, starring Taissa Farmiga) and the Crooked Man.
Though the latter spin-off remains in development, the Conjuring-verse has stayed busy, even with Wan working elsewhere. (Wan has since applied his blockbuster chops to Furious 7 and Aquaman, though he’s due to make a horror return with Malignant later this year.) 2019 saw the release of both Annabelle Comes Home and the stealth tie-in The Curse of La Llorona (which featured cameos both from a character introduced in Annabelle and Annabelle herself but was never marketed as a Conjuring film) both rock-solid entries in a franchise that’s become one of the safest bets in horror.
But when does safe become boring? And at what point do the films’ moral simplicity start to feel a little icky? La Llorona director Michael Chaves takes over for Wan on the new The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and delivers a serviceable impression, leaning on effective, but familiar tricks we’ve seen before as he lets the camera swoop and twirl and bathes the frame in unnerving shadows. Like the previous films, the story is inspired by a case in which the Warrens were actually involved—here a real-life 1981 murder trial in which a 19-year-old man named Arne Johnson (played here by Ruairi O’Connor) attempted to argue in court that the Devil made him stab his landlord to death. In real-life, as in the film, Johnson’s claims were inspired in part by his participation in the exorcism of his girlfriend’s 11-year-old brother, a procedure overseen by the Warrens. A small media sensation at the time that previously inspired a TV movie (starring Andy Griffith, Eddie Albert, and a young Kevin Bacon as the murderer), the Johnson trial calls out for a more nuanced, ambiguous treatment than what it receives here.
The Conjuring Universe’s multiplex-friendly mix of dread and dynamic filmmaking may have lost the ability to surprise. No scene has ever topped the “Hide and Clap” scene in the original, though many have tried. But what franchise survives by reinventing itself each time out? There’s a reason the action scenes in MCU movies tend to look the same, even if the players and settings change. The point is to give people more of what you already know they want. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It seemingly doesn’t carve out sequences dedicated to setting up more films, but we do get another glimpse of the dreadful knick-knacks housed in the Warrens’ basement, a reminder that we could be taking return trips there for years to come.