CONJURING UNIVERSE: THE GHOST STORIES THAT CHANGED HOLLYWOOD
By Vinnie Mancuso
The eagerly awaited Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, is slated for release on June 4th, 2021. The film began development in 2016 and was officially announced in 2012 with The Curse of La Llorona director Michael Chaves attached. James Wan, along with longtime franchise producer Peter Safran, will be back to co-produce the project.
It’s James Wan who reignited the paranormal genre with The Conjuring, a film that went on to spawn one of the only other cinematic universes to work with mainstream audiences. The original 2013 supernatural horror film spawned several spinoffs and sequels, including The Nun, the Annabelle movies, and the The Curse of La Llorona, with several new titles currently in development.
The Conjuring films investigate real-life events like the Amityville Murders and the Enfield Poltergeist from 1977. The films are anchored by the infamous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, and each well crafted narrative is inspired by the dynamic duo. The Conjuring 3 will be based on a murder trial that took place in 1981 in Connecticut, referred to as the Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson. Here is the official synopsis for The Conjuring 3 from Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema:
The Devil Made Me Do It reveals a chilling story of terror, murder and unknown evil that shocked even experienced real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. One of the most sensational cases from their files, it starts with a fight for the soul of a young boy, then takes them beyond anything they’d ever seen before, to mark the first time in U.S. history that a murder suspect would claim demonic possession as a defense.
But to fully appreciate the release of a new Conjuring film, it’s helpful to take a closer look at previous chapters for a full explanation of the demons, dolls and nuns in James Wan’s horror franchise. Here, in chronological order, is the entire Conjuring Universe explained.
‘The Nun’ (Romania, 1952)
The earliest entry in The Conjuring Universe requires us to go back to the Middle Ages, when a demon-worshiping duke built himself an abbey in the Romanian wilderness to carry out some foul deeds. The Catholic Church intervened and claimed the abbey for themselves, dubbing it the Cârta Monastery. Bombing during World War II reawakened the evil that the duke originally stirred up, most notably, Valak, the defiler, the profane, the marquis of snakes.
After Sister Victoria kills herself to prevent Valak from claiming her soul, the Vatican dispatches Father Burke and Sister Irene to investigate. The duo meets Maurice (“Frenchy”), a friendly French-Canadian who aids them in their research. Burke, Irene and Frenchy manage to use the abbey’s hidden artifact: A vial of Jesus Christ’s blood to banish Valak back to Hell. Or so they think? Before they ride off into the sunset, the camera catches an upside down cross on the back of Frenchy’s neck. This will be important when we come back around to The Conjuring.
‘Annabelle: Creation’ (Southern California, 1955)
In 1943, a dollmaker named Samuel Mullins and his wife Esther lose their daughter Annabelle in an auto accident. Flash forward to 1955 and the Mullins have opened their desolate home to a bunch of wayward orphans from St. Eustace Home for Girls. The group is overseen by Sister Charlotte, who herself made a stop at the Cârta Monastery before Valak wiped the place unclean. Sister Charlotte shows Samuel Mullins a photo from the abbey that reveals Valak lurking in the background.
One of the children, the polio-stricken Janie, discovers a horrific-looking porcelain doll. Immediately, a horned demon starts throwing orphans down staircases while demanding Janice’s soul. It is revealed that, in their grief, the Mullins turned to black magic to see their dead daughter again. But they were misled by that demon, who tricked the mourning parents into attaching the demonic presence to the doll, turning the children’s toy into a conduit for all types of evil. The couple’s housing of the orphan girls was their way of atoning for their actions.
Eventually, the demon succeeds in possessing Janice, who escapes the house through a hole in the wall, leaving the doll behind. The orphan, still possessed and now calling herself Annabelle, is adopted by Pete and Sharon Higgins. Annabelle grows up, runs away from home, joins a Satanic cult and returns with her boyfriend to murder her adopted parents.
This is an important scene from…
‘Annabelle’ (Santa Monica, 1967)
Before being slaughtered by their demon-possessed daughter, the Higgins were the next-door neighbors of John and Mia Form. John gifts his pregnant wife with a doll for her collection: The Annabelle doll from the Mullins’ farm.
After killing her parents, the real Annabelle and her boyfriend break into the Forms’ house. The boyfriend is killed by the police, but Annabelle slits her own throat while holding the porcelain doll. With its host dead, the horned demon from Annabelle: Creation is stuck in the doll’s body again and is looking for a soul to inhabit. He sets his sights on Mia.
Help arrives in the form of a bookseller named Evelyn, who has a book that seems to explain everything. Also to the rescue is Father Perez, who offers to take the doll to a couple of experts named Ed and Lorraine Warren. Before he can, the demon attacks. Later, in the hospital, the demon manipulates Father Perez’s body, using it to abduct the Forms’ newborn daughter, Leah. In exchange for her daughter, Mia offers her own soul by attempting to jump out a window. John stops her, but then Evelyn, who has the guilt of her own dead daughter on her hands, makes the leap instead while holding the Annabelle doll. This thinly explained reason ends the demon’s search for a soul. Or does it?
In Annabelle’s closing moments, a woman buys the doll in a toy shop. “It’s a gift,” she says, for her daughter Debbie. As it turns out, a nursing student named Debbie is describing all the nocturnal disturbances her doll is causing during the opening scene of The Conjuring.
‘The Conjuring’ (Rhode Island, 1971)
Well-known demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren are called in to help the Perron family, who have been experiencing some highly disturbing interruptions in the middle of the night. Further investigation of the family’s Rhode Island home reveals that it used to belong to a devil-worshiping witch named Bathsheba. In 1863, Bathsheba had a son with a rich farmer, who caught her trying to sacrifice the son a week after his birth. Bathsheba immediately climbed a tree, declared her love for Satan, and hung herself.
Back in 1971, Bathsheba is none too pleased with a family of seven moving onto the grounds. The witch possesses Carolyn Perron, forcing the Warrens to perform an unsanctioned exorcism. It’s a success and the Perron family moves on with their lives, witch-free.
Two important notes:
1) The Warrens mention they already have a new case to check out in Long Island. This turns out to be the horrific happenings surrounding the Lutz family that came to be known as the Amityville Horror.
2) When Carolyn Perron meets the Warrens, they’re delivering a lecture on possession at Massachusetts Western University. The subject is Maurice (“Frenchy”) from The Nun, who is still very much possessed by Valak. During Maurice’s exorcism, Lorraine encounters Valak for the first time, a relationship that is key to the plot of The Conjuring 2. But first…
‘Annabelle Comes Home’ (California, 1972)
One of the best things about Annabelle Comes Home is that it’s a dozen or so backdoor pilots for future Conjuring spinoffs. A year after the Perron family exorcism, the Warrens are well established in the demonology community. With their notoriety on the rise, they head off to yet another case, leaving their daughter Judy and a babysitter, Mary Ellen, alone in a house that has roughly 500 cursed objects in the basement.
One of those objects is, of course, the Annabelle doll, which the Warrens acquired at the end of The Conjuring (this film begins with the doll trying to get Ed Warren run over by a truck). Annabelle Comes Home does its best to explain that the doll itself is not actually possessed by evil, but is a conduit for evil. Like moths to a flame, put Annabelle in the room and demons come running.
This is exactly what happens when Mary Ellen’s friend, Daniella, disturbs the doll while looking for a way to contact her dead father. Daniella manages to grope and disturb everything in the Warrens’ room of horrors, unleashing all manner of monsters to come out to play.
While the terror inflicted on the girls is entertaining to watch, the end is a bit anticlimactic with Annabelle being locked back in her case, which somehow quiets all the other artifacts from their Jumanji-like state.
‘The Curse of La Llorona’ (Los Angeles, 1973)
The Curse of La Llorona is barely connected to the rest of The Conjuring Universe. The main creepy ghoul has a tear-streaked face and a horrific wide mouth, which seems to be enough to get James Wan to produce this one.
The film is based on the folklore figure La Llorona (the “Wailing Woman”), who discovered her husband’s infidelity and drowned their two children in a jealous rage. Now she prowls the earth, wailing and searching for children to drag into the nearest body of water.
In this case, a family has run afoul, having captured the attention of the Wailing Woman. With a mother at her breaking point, a Child Protective Services case worker tries and fails to protect the children from La Llorona. The mother then seeks the help of Father Perez, who you may remember from the first Annabelle film. Perez is willing to lend a hand by referring the family to a priest turned off-the-books shaman. Together, the mother and the priest stage a showdown and drive the Wailing Woman into the land of the dead. The curse is lifted, and the nightmare is over. Maybe.
‘The Conjuring 2’ (Enfield, England, 1977)
While carrying out a séance at the sight of the Amityville murders, Lorraine Warren has visions of a demonic nun and the violent death of her husband, Ed. When the nun continues to haunt Lorraine’s dreams, the demonologist demands to know its name. The demon refuses to budge. Or perhaps there was more to that unintelligible growl.
Across the pond, the Hodgson family of Enfield, England is being assaulted by a hostile poltergeist. The ghost, which especially targets the eldest daughter, Janet, mostly appears in the ghastly image of former homeowner Bill Wilkins.
Because of her ominous visions, Lorraine is hesitant to take on the Enfield case, but Ed is eager to help. As it turns out, help might not even be needed. Surveillance cameras catch Janet smashing plates in the kitchen, suggesting she’s orchestrating a hoax. The Warrens leave, but while on the train, Lorraine realizes the ghost of Bill Wilkins isn’t the real threat at all. It’s Valak, using the ghost as a pawn to get to Janet Hodgson’s soul.
With this realization comes another breakthrough: Valak did offer up his name to Lorraine, which gives the demonologist power over the creature. With Ed Warren hanging out of a window, trying to avoid a lightning bolt-sharpened tree branch, Lorraine speaks Valak’s name, sending the demon back to Hell.
Like the actual universe itself, The Conjuring realm is still expanding. There have been talks of a Crooked Man spin-off, as well as a Nun sequel. But in the meantime, we have The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It. It’s comforting to paranormal film lovers that Ed and Lorraine Warren led a life scary enough to fill a franchise for decades.
