With The Conjuring: Last Rites now making a killing in theaters, one must wonder if it truly is the end of The Conjuring Universe. That’s what they’re saying but, let’s face it, the fourth Friday the 13th film was called Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and it was less than a year before audiences got Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Profitable horror never truly dies. But, for now, we have nine installments, and some have undoubtedly turned out better than others. Note that there have been two films that exist within The Conjuring Universe but are not official members. Those were The Curse of La Llorona and the Manson Family murders movie Wolves at the Door. Suffice to say, they would rank towards the bottom.
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However, La Llorona ended up being important, because it introduced Michael Chaves to the IP. Chaves went on to helm The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, The Nun II, and Last Rites. Speaking of Last Rites, how does it rank among the nine official installments? Let’s find out.
9) Annabelle
The Annabelle doll became The Conjuring‘s stand-out because we knew next to nothing about it. As is explained in that franchise-opener’s first scene, the doll is nothing more than a vessel for a demonic presence. That’s really all we needed to know about Annabelle.
But The Conjuring made a ton of money, Annabelle caught on with fans, and the next year we got Annabelle, which is the only installment of the entire franchise that feels wholly skippable. Filled with bland performances, scares that amount to nothing more than reproductions of effective frights in the 2013 film, and a bunch of plot fluff that didn’t need to exist in the first place. Outside a supporting performance by Alfre Woodard and a creepy basement sequence featuring the demon that is in the Annabelle doll, Annabelle can be passed over on Conjuring binge night.
8) The Nun
Up until Last Rites, The Nun, the fifth entry, had the highest opening of the franchise. And it’s easy to see why the next three entries saw lower turnouts because, while it has some merit, The Nun is overall a needless and unscary addition. The type of movie that makes quite a few people check out of the franchise as a whole. It’s also the type of movie that opens with information then the two protagonists spend the whole narrative coming to a realization that the audience was informed of in the first five minutes.
To point out the good, Taissa Farmiga was a great addition to the franchise as Sister Irene, making a natural fit alongside her big sister Vera in the mainline installments. The film is also gorgeous, having been filmed at locations like Romania’s Corvin Castle and Cârta Monastery. But unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good. When it’s trying to be scary it’s either over-reliant on CGI (even Valek looks different here than she did just two years earlier in The Conjuring 2) or tossing out played-out jump scares. The pacing also oscillates between lightning-fast and dry and overly talky. The Nun may rank higher than Annabelle, but it’s not that much higher than Annabelle. It gets the edge because it’s a little more atmospheric and Bonnie Aarons continues to be great even if her title character is underutilized and a bit to CGI-ified.
7) The Nun II
If there’s one advantage The Nun has over The Nun II, it’s that it builds tension. However, most of that tension led to scares that didn’t quite work.
The Nun II‘s fix is to basically throw twice as many scares at the audience and hope that they land. Quite often, they do, even if the depth of the plot isn’t anything to write home about. Overall, The Nun II has the edge over its predecessor because we get more of the title antagonist, the atmospherics are still present, and Taissa Farmiga is even better in the role of Irene than she was the first time around.
6) The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
By just focusing on a couple, one of whom may be possessed, and the Warrens, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It feels more intimate than the first two films. And, in retelling the “Devil Made Me Do It” case, the first U.S. court case where the defense sought to prove innocence not based upon insanity, but upon demonic possession, it has pretty iconic legal history to mine gold from.
On one hand, Michael Chaves’ first mainline Conjuring movie pulls it off. Like Wan he’s able to recreate a different time period via a brown color tint and solid work by the wardrobe department. On the other hand, a more specific focus and sparse scares makes it all play across as less of an event film than the other mainline installments. It’s a courtroom movie with a few frights, not a fright fest with a few courtroom movie story beats. Your mileage will vary, depending on whether you want a Conjuring movie to be a series of escalations or if you’re fine with a Conjuring movie trying something new.
5) The Conjuring: Last Rites
The Conjuring: Last Rites and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It are essentially tied, though they’re quite different from one another. Last Rites is a return to form, even if Michael Chaves still isn’t quite as ingenious behind the camera as James Wan, whereas his The Devil Made Me Do It tried to take the series in a somewhat new direction. However, it didn’t stick the landing as often as it needed to in order to be one of the franchise’s best installments.
But Last Rites landing this low on the list shouldn’t be seen as an indictment of its quality. Overall this is a fine way to say goodbye to Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson’s Lorraine and Ed Warren. It’s visually stylish, better paced than The Devil Made Me Do It, and even feels like it has higher stakes (the death of a franchise mainstay character helps with that). The film ends on a cheerful note, and if this is indeed the final adventure for the Warrens, it was nice to have it be an entry that circles back to their first ever case, one that predated the events of even the first film.
4) Annabelle Comes Home
Annabelle Comes Home has a way of making you feel like there were never any stakes in this series. It has more antagonists than usual for a single installment (Annabelle, the Ferryman, the Bride, the Black Shuck, etc.), but no one ever seems as though they’re in and real danger. Katie Sarife’s Daniela gets stabbed in the stomach, falls back, and realizes there’s no wound. She gets possessed immediately after, sure, but by film’s end, she’s fine. The Warrens’ daughter, Judy (Mckenna Grace, excellent per usual) can face a ghost werewolf and walk away without a scratch. Stuff like that.
At this point, six movies in, we had seen everything The Conjuring Universe was capable of throwing at us, and none of it was particularly frightening the sixth time around. Even still, it was nice to have the Warrens back for a few scenes, the rotating color wheel in the bedroom shot was a nice touch, and the cast gives it their all. Annabelle Comes Home falls comfortably towards the upper middle of the pack as an enjoyable single-locale Saturday afternoon horror flick.
3) Annabelle: Creation
The original Annabelle was very much The Conjuring Universe’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It took a very popular character, gave them their own film and made money doing so, but everyone who bought a ticket ended up being both disappointed and wondering what the point was. Then, Annabelle: Creation came along and, like James Mangold’s The Wolverine, said “This is how you make a solo film work for that popular character.”
There’s still the argument to be made that the Annabelle doll has never been scarier than it was in the opening scene of The Conjuring. If there’s one demon in The Conjuring Universe that didn’t need a lot of backstory, it’s this one, because the doll’s appearance is enough to make it work. But Annabelle decided to go halfway with exposition, resulting in a movie that felt pointless. Annabelle: Creation answers the questions a solo movie should, and it answers them well. It also does as good a job of transporting the audience to a different time period as the first two mainline Conjuring movies. In this case, primarily 1955. Toss in excellent performances by Talitha Bateman and Becky‘s Lulu Wilson and Annabelle: Creation has a fair claim to the best spin-off movie of the nine-film franchise. It even has a final scene that helps to justify the existence of its disappointing spin-off predecessor.
2) The Conjuring 2
Just as The Conjuring did a great job of placing you in early ’70s Rhode Island, The Conjuring 2 excels at placing you firmly in late ’70s rainy Enfield, London. And, while the film feels a bit overstuffed on occasion, this is about as great as a mainline Conjuring sequel could hope to be.
Considering we focus on a struggling single mom to four kids, the emotional stakes are raised, which is only amplified by the fact that Lorraine Warren is afraid to take on this particular case for fear of losing her husband, Ed, whose death she has seen in multiple visions. The provider of those visions is none other than Valak, the demon nun played to perfection by Bonnie Aarons. Valac is more or less the franchise’s big bad, and even with two spin-off installments of “her” own, she was never put to better use than here. The Conjuring 2 isn’t quite as frightening as the original and, again, its pacing intermittently suffers from having too much narrative stuffed into one package, but on the whole, it is an impressive sequel and integral chapter of the universe.
1) The Conjuring
The Conjuring made Insidious look like a practice run. Quite a few of the tricks director James Wan used in that film were altered and improved, the production values were increased, and as a whole it’s just the definitive example of why he’s one of the horror genre’s most impressive directors. This is a movie that fires on all cylinders. There’s never a false note in the tone or performances and, unlike its sequels, it feels incredibly streamlined. There isn’t much gap between scares, yet the scares never feel overdone.
The film’s ace in the hole was the casting of Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, who fully sell the love between the Warren couple. Regardless of how you feel about demons and ghosts in the real world, or the actual Warrens for that matter (if you were alive at the time of their investigations, that is), you want the movie’s version to succeed and be okay. They are the perfect center for this franchise. They make the audience feel safe just as well as they make the tormented Perron family feel safe. The original The Conjuring is iconic, with a note-perfect reconstruction of its time period and the best scare of 2010s horror cinema: the demon hands clapping next to Lili Taylor’s Carolyn Perron. Some of the other installments of The Conjuring Universe have come close to capturing the original’s power, but it’s still the first time out the gate for the win.
Stream every The Conjuring Universe movie on HBO Max and let us know in the comments which of them is your favorite.
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