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When The Conjuring first hit theaters, it revitalized the horror genre with its chilling story and terrifying atmosphere. Ed and Lorraine Warren's fictional debut was met with high praise, leading to the successful sequel, The Conjuring 2. But with success came a flood of spinoffs—from Annabelle to The Nun—turning The Conjuring into a full-fledged horror cinematic universe. Which begs the question: Do we really need a Conjuring Cinematic Universe?
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I command you to reveal yourself
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If you're a horror fan, you probably have a few heart-stopping memories of The Conjuring
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movies and their spinoffs. Based on the real-life case files of purported paranormal investigators
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and probable con artists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, the franchise has been terrifying audiences for a decade
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But often, the scariest thing about a movie in The Conjuring universe is its Rotten Tomatoes score
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It might be time to ask ourselves whether we should close this case and lock it away for good
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Did it work? The evil is contained. 2013's The Conjuring is seen by many
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as an attempt to harken back to the days of classic horror. The movie leans heavily on established haunted houses
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and possession tropes from some of the most well-known and beloved horror movies out there
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Fans will tell you The Conjuring has earned its place among those exemplary influences
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Other viewers are quick to dismiss it as a glossy, overly tropey Hollywood horror flick
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No matter where you fall on that wide spectrum of opinions, it can't be denied that The Conjuring
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does have several memorable scares. Anyone who has ever seen the trailer remembers the infamous clap
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and there's the inspired and horrifying take on the sheet ghost, the wardrobe scene
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and the hanging scene. Because every Patrick Wilson horror franchise needs to put something
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creepy behind him while he looks slightly bemused. Wilson and his co-star Vera Farmiga really bring
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the whole thing home with their unmatched chemistry and warmth in the face of all these
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ghastly atrocities, a dynamic the franchise would go on to exploit to the fullest. There was no way
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of knowing when The Conjuring first came out that its sequels and spinoffs would dominate the horror
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landscape for 10 years, though with hindsight we probably could have guessed, since it was directed
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by James Wan, the man behind Saw and Insidious, and who would later involve himself in both the DCEU and the Fast franchise doesn seem to know how to work with just one movie Wan knew from the start that he wanted to turn The Conjuring into a franchise sort of playing amongst ourselves in our heads and just sort of joking
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that it wouldn't be great if we get the chance to explore other stories as well
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within the world of the Warrens, and even pitched the idea of calling the movies The Warren Files
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which is why we got a scene in the original Conjuring that was straight out of a Marvel post-credits scene
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with Wilson's Ed Warren guiding a reporter around the artifact room in a twisted game of show and tell
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After the movie made almost $320 million worldwide on a budget of just $20 million
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Juan got his wish. At time of recording, there are eight movies in the Conjuring universe
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with another one set to release this week. All combined, the movies have grossed a total of $2.1 billion in theaters
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with a budget of just $178 million. So it's safe to say that the Conjuring universe is successful
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But making billions at the box office doesn't necessarily equate to creating quality releases
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If you've kept up with all The Conjuring movies, you know this firsthand. All these movies are period pieces, taking place between 1952 and 1981
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Most of them follow Ed and Lorraine Warren on their various paranormal investigations
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and those that don't are still linked back to them. After The Conjuring's incredible success in 2013
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the reins were handed to John R. Leonetti for the first of many spinoffs
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His work at the time included directorial and cinematography credits in the Mortal Kombat movie series, Joe Dirt
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Hilary Duff's Raise Your Voice, and Piranha 3D. He also worked on Insidious and the first Conjuring movie
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Talk about a diverse portfolio. Sadly, Leonetti's own installment of the Conjuring universe
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wasn't exactly a critical darling. 2014's Annabelle was never going to be able to live up to the expectations
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created by its predecessor, but it struggled to meet even the lowest of expectations
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Cheap scares, a meandering and confusing plot, and little in the way of fresh ideas
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made it hard to sit through. Still with its abysmal first run out of the way Annabelle managed to scrape up a passing grade on Rotten Tomatoes with its second and third outings 2017 Annabelle Creation and 2019 Annabelle Comes Home
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directed by David F. Sandberg and Gary Dauberman, respectively. Both Corinne Hardy's The Nun and Michael Chavez's The Curse of La Llorona were also massive critical failures
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The only two movies in the whole franchise to score above a 70 are The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2
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They also happen to be the only two movies that James Wan directed. He has writing or producing credits on every other installment
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The most recent addition to the franchise, 2021's The Conjuring, The Devil Made Me Do It
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was welcomed with lukewarm reviews. But audiences were more forgiving, with most citing the true crime angle
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in the Warren's endearing relationship as its biggest saving grace. However, even if The Conjuring 3 felt like a breath of fresh air for the universe
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it was certainly nothing new for the horror genre. Like the rest of the franchise, most of the ideas brought to the table in The Devil Made Me Do It
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have been used in other, better horror movies over the years. The Conjuring Universe is so aggressively hit or miss
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That isn't a unique phenomenon. Other horror icons have suffered a similar fate
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seeing reboots, sequels, and spin-offs of widely variable qualities over the years
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Outside of horror, we're seeing the effects of Marvel and Star Wars fatigue happen in real time
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The Conjuring Universe is guilty of producing far too many of these types of shallow installments
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Rather than make anything of substance, Warner Brothers and the creatives at the center of The Conjuring Universe
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have been producing standard or even substandard genre films and lazily pinning a franchise-related name or face to the poster
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Knowing the backstory of the creepy demonic nun that shows up for all of five minutes in The Conjuring 2
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does nothing for the universe at large. Who are you? The same can be said for Annabelle and the absolute mess of a story they've attached to her
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There is no greater implications for the world, no worthwhile changes in the status quo or artistic subversions of the franchise
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no reason for them to exist outside of the vague gesturing towards a room full of haunted artifacts Expanding into a cinematic universe based on the Warren supposed real experiences have somewhat diminished the more intimate nature of horror as a genre
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They don't have any greater messaging behind them. They're just one of many case files to skim through
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Not unlike Warren's real-life occult museum, which inspired the Artifact Room, most of the movies in the Conjuring universe are just superficially creepy objects to glance at
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for a few moments before moving on to something else. From the opposite side of the glass case or a big screen, viewers can look on with mild entertainment or outright ambivalence
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The trade-off is that this method of franchising has made The Conjuring movies much more widely digestible
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both from the perspective of scope as well as quality. In some ways, this actually helps the franchise
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You don't have to commit to watching a decade of movies if you want to catch the most recent one in theaters
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because chances are it won't have that much to do with the previous iterations anyway
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But does that one benefit really outweigh all the drawbacks? Like a demon haunting an innocent family, the Conjuring universe is desperate for a soul
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From the very beginning, the Conjuring was built, borrowed, and stolen off the backs of other horror properties
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and that practice has finally caught up with them. Audiences are starved for originality, and this franchise hasn't been able to provide it
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In truth, most franchises today are struggling to meet that expectation. It's possible that The Nun 2 could follow in Annabelle's tiny footprints and reanimate
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the Conjuring universe with a middling-reviewed sequel to a spinoff, but we have to ask ourselves
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one scarily simple question. Do we want it to? Considering its track record, The Conjuring needs to be put to rest
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While nine movies in ten years is a shockingly impressive feat, it's far less impressive
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when you consider how many of them were tragically terrible or just plain boring
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Hey, sorry guys. It's time to stick the franchise in a closet covered in Bible passages for a few years
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and give some other horror movies a chance to haunt our nightmares