In writing thia, I accept that there are plana for more tangential movies, and perhaps a show, but it ia my hope we have seen the last of this ‘verse.
I say this as someone who loved many of the films, and like most of the rest. The time has come, though. Especially when the ‘we don’t even know her’ franchise film “The Curse of La Llorona” was way scarier than the last two main entries to the franchise.
It’a time.
Looking at the totality, as it stands, the Annabelle movies are overall better, and the Nun movies scarier. The heart of the series are the Warrens, beautifully played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Fermiga, but the fact is that the series is celluloid washing a very dodgy legacy. The Warrens, by all accounts, were not very good people, and the most you can say for them is that they brought the paranormal to popular culture. They created perhaps the first ghost hunting brand, essentially. And that is it. Without the baggage of the Warrens, this is an overall better series, though their brand brought people out in the first place.
Give them their due, the Warrens were famous…but their real-life legacy is an anchor on the franchise. It got beyond weird seeing how far the movies deviated from the ‘real’ cases and real people. It feels icky. Whatever the real people in those cases wwnt through, I guarantee it wasn’t what was in the films.
I love supernatural films, and the first two were great, but the core films forced us into the weeds of the Warrens, and wove a weird mythology around them that has little to do with the people. The scares got corny, the reliance on Christian mysticism to save the day felt lazy, and every movie tried to make it seem like THIS was really their scariest case. For real.
In the latest it comes down to a battle with a flippin’ haunted mirror.
Woof.
The Annabelle movies are pretty spooky, with a lot of scares. The Nun is a horrifying character in so-so movies. The ghosts in the Conjuring films just got corny. At their heart they are meant to be ‘haunted house’ films, and they forgot that.
The whole ‘shared universe’ thing is a fun idea, when done well. Mostly, due to the nature of the film industry, and not being able to commit to movies until they prove they are moneymakers, the notion feels slipshod and forced. The core idea of the Conjuring universe is great, but when the heart of the films revolve around fictionalizing real people, maybe it is time to put the exorcism kit away and move on.
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 