I Watched These So You Didn’t Have To 2025: The Conjuring Universe

"You have a lot of spirits in here, but there is one I'm most worried about… because it is so hateful."

With spooky season getting underway and a conversation with a friend making me realize I’d only ever seen the first film in the Conjuring Universe — the CCU, if you will —, I figured I might as well check the rest of them out. In my head they all came out to great praise and joyous shrieks, but I always thought they just seemed like cheap jump-scare experiences that I didn’t necessarily need to spend my time on. The universe is broken into 3 distinct sections, with thematic overlaps and minor establishing tie-ins that cross between them:

The Conjuring films feature Ed and Lorraine Warren as the main characters hunting ghosts and banishing demons, all while trying to have a family.

Anabelle is an evil doll used as a conduit for a demon.

The Nun is basically the same thing but worse and more cringe.

Having watched all 9 of these things now and spent just over 1,000 minutes with them… I can tell you that I was basically right in my assumption that they don’t really need to be heralded in most any way, but that only a couple are truly unwatchable.

If you’re in for a haunted house film and just want some easy popcorn-munching, scream-and-laugh scares, nearly anything here in the CCU will serve you just fine. I don’t really think even my two stand out favorites of the group provide anything more than that [though they do provide it the best], while my three bottom films in the series can be skipped by even the most diehard of jump-scare fanatics. I rated these within their specific sphere of influence and, below, have ranked them against one another.

This was an interesting journey and probably the least overall painful of these I’ve done yet.

#1 “Anabelle: Creation” [2017] <4th release>

Given that this was not only a sequel to [spoilers] one of my bottom three in the entire series, but the 4th film in release order, I’m just as shocked as you to see that Anabelle: Creation — the second film in the Anabelle line — not only crawled it’s way to the top of the list, but did so pretty resolutely. In general, the CCU suffers from having some kind of weird editing process that makes the final products all look like made-for-TV movies and, though Anabelle: Creation is not an exception to that, it is an exception to the kinds of scares that the entire rest of the series has to offer. In Creation we’re offered the only experience in any of the 9 films that allows its horror to simmer with things other than the formulaic: loud noise, thing that is likely going to jump you, pause, silence, thing then jumps you with another loud noise; and actually gives scare moments that make you say “uh oh, don’t do that…” instead. It still has its jumps and bumps but, at its best, Creation is more of a terror movie than a campy horror like the rest of them here.

While it certainly doesn’t escape the ultimate failing of nearly every film in the CCU [something I’ll talk more about below], it does create an experience unlike anything before or after it. As long as you can get past its Hallmark visual styling, Anabelle: Creation is a damn[ed] good time and easily the best this world has to offer.

#2 “The Conjuring” [2013] <1st release>

Coming in at a fairly close #2 here is The Conjuring itself. The OG film still stands as something interesting and fun within the haunted house genre, and largely does for it what Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield did for found footage. If you want a simple and fun bump-in-the-night film, there’s not really any reason to look beyond The Conjuring, and there’s only two things that kept it out of my #1 spot on this list. The first is just a taste thing; I found the thrills and chills that Anabelle: Creation had to offer more inline with what I like — a slower brew violence as opposed to a punch in the face scream — while the second is an annoyingly stupid plot device that simply didn’t need to happen and just added length to the film [Loraine Warren is an expert demonologist… So, someone please explain to me why she would wear a locket with a portrait of her daughter while cleansing a haunted house…].

The Conjuring is a great corrupted home film with some exceptional standout moments and one that the rest of the series clearly tries time and time again to emulate. Adding to its strengths, it’s also the only one in the entire series to not suffer from the very lame A->B->C storytelling that every… single… other… film insists on sticking with for some reason. If you’ve never seen any of these, I think either this or the above pick are the perfect places to start.

#3 “The Conjuring: Last Rites” [2025] <9th release>

Now, I am just as shocked as you are to see the 9th release into the CCU make it to the 3rd spot on this very canon and very objectively correct list. Any series that goes this long has to just turn into pondwater this late in its cycle… right? Well… not entirely. The Conjuring: Last Rites [what is effectively The Conjuring 4], like most everything else from here on out, is predictable, formulaic, and largely uninventive… but it does have a couple of memorable moments, and I think serves as a perfectly emblematic reference for both what does and doesn’t work across the series as a whole; thus landing it below my two favorites and above everything else… If only barely.

While the villain in Last Rites is one of the most underdeveloped and hackneyed in the entire series and the film itself is far too long, it also has a some great scares that function very well and are spooky to watch without just being loud and in your face. What sets this entry slightly ahead of the others as well is the way that it uses everything that’s come before it to create a semi-unique landscape in which the Warrens have to fight for their lives this time, plainly utilizing all the tools and hindrances in their haunted little toolbox.

I certainly wouldn’t say that The Conjuring: Last Rites is a “good movie”, but I would say that it’s serviceable and likely to scratch an itch if you want something about a haunted family or have a thing about mirrors. I’d also say that if you’ve watched these first three films and find your interest flagging, you can stop now and save yourself some time. Anabelle: Creation has the most unique and interesting scares of the series, The Conjuring itself has some of the best pacing and is the best haunted house movie of them all, and Last Rites serves as a perfect reflection of everything else the series holds [both good and bad]. So, if you’ve seen these three and aren’t sure if you need more… You don’t. If you’re still excited by them, know that they do get worse from here [some of them significantly], but that each has its own strengths as well.

#4 “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” [2021] <7th release>

Initially, placing The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was a tough call. On one hand, I was definitely more bored than with Last Rites but, on the other, I was intrigued that they did something different and engaging by making it a mystery instead of a straight up horror… Then I thought about it more and found myself frustrated again and again by the simplicity of the steps to solve said mystery and annoyed by the way certain characters insisted on acting, and [maybe more importantly] I didn’t think that this one was as good an example as Last Rites when it came to showcasing what the CCU was as a whole. So, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It ends up landing itself comfortably in the 4th spot of the list; making me wish I’d watched Seven and/or The Autopsy of Jane Doe instead.

It isn’t that Devil is bad in most any way, it’s just that it’s simple and forgettable. Again, like most things here, it has a moment or two that are fun and engaging, but the overall pacing, flatness of the mystery, and general sort of goofiness of the entire package leaves this one a touch sour for me. If you’ve already cashed your penny and are shooting for the whole pound now, I don’t think that you’re going to find The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It particularly offensive or anything, but I do think that you’re better served by stronger horror mysteries like those mentioned just above, The Ring, or even something a little more obtuse like Moloch or Fréwaka.

While it’s a fine entry into the CCU itself, there’s just so many good horror mysteries that this one may as well have turned itself in before making me sort it out.

#5 “Annabelle Comes Home” [2019] <6th release>

Another just middle-of-the-road entry, Annabelle Comes Home only falls behind Devil because it isn’t terribly inventive and is terribly silly at times. That said, if all you want is a haunted house movie, Annabelle Comes Home is uh… Literally a haunted house movie.

It’s hard to say a ton about this one because it’s just so… So? It’s a movie that happens and mostly works entirely fine. There’s not much about it that’s stupid, there’s not much about it that’s smart, and there’s really nothing about it [save for a single short bit] that’s even particularly memorable. It serves, it screams, and then it ends. Of all the films in the franchise, I’d say that this one feels the most like an episode of a TV show between two major arcs: it just sort of e x i s t s.

#6 “The Nun 2” [2023] <8th release>

What sets The Nun 2 apart from its predecessor is [spoilers]… Goddamn nearly everything beyond its main characters. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it below, but The Nun is one of the most pointless movies I’ve watched in a long time, while The Nun 2 is simply one of the most forgettable. Trying again at the mystery horror vibe, this time with a dash of National Treasure [I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Nundependance], The Nun 2 and writers Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and Akela Cooper [two of whom, annoyingly, wrote The Autopsy of Jane Doe] seem to have forgotten that a good mystery has to be at least a little obscured in order to matter.

While not as guilty of this as the next three movies in the franchise, there are elements of The Nun 2 that aren’t meant to be funny, but definitely are, and a whole lot more of them that just simply don’t matter. The only thing that makes this entry more memorable than Annabelle Comes Home is that accidental humor and some moments of just outright stupidity. But that’s ok, at least it isn’t…

#7 “Annabelle” [2014] <2nd release>

In a funny and extremely cursed confluence, this is the same list position that both Hellraiser 2: Hellbound and Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse found themselves in when I made this journey through those piles of sludge as well. There seems to be something about second films in a series just not being very good…

Part Rosemary’s Baby and part uninspired trash, Anabelle, the second release in the CCU, is not very good. Actually, if it wasn’t for the repetition joke I wanted to make there, I would have said that it’s really quite impressively bad actually. The dialogue is cheesy, the pacing is horrendous, characters do things that don’t make any sense, and the whole thing is basically an accidental comedy. As I’ve said before, most of these films have something that sets them apart, and that even manages to be true here, but goodness me the whole rest of this experience was so brutally stupid that, if I’d been watching it under any other circumstances, I would have likely turned it off after the first several minutes. Watch this for the elevator scare sequence, then save yourself both sanity and time, and just move on.

While The Nun 2 was pretty lame and not something I ever need to return to, these last three films in the franchise are things that not even you need to return to. Just let these ones exist in the ether and, if we don’t talk about them long enough, maybe they’ll fade away and vanish entirely, leaving us all better off.

#8 “The Conjuring 2” [2016] <3rd release>

Something something second movie something something bad something something joke.

The Conjuring 2 is not only one of the worst films in this franchise, but the one that I’m the most absolutely baffled by. Somehow the internet was on some entirely different form of drugs when they rated this one, because it actually has the second highest ratings of the entire franchise; falling only a couple of points in any given category behind the OG film… Which, as I said, is baffling. The Conjuring 2 is not only not good, it’s awful. The plot is boring, we spend a ton of time with characters doing and saying stupid things, and nearly every scare is so telegraphed that it’s better to scream out of turn, giving everyone around you a fright yourself. Yes, it does have two good visual moments, but boy do those do absolutely nothing to elevate this pile of ectoplasmic waste from the River Styx.

I could see how [in times of true desperation] Annabelle could offer some sort of miniscule entertainment solace… I cannot see that same respite in any way or form from The Conjuring 2.

They couldn’t even be bothered to give it some sort of cheesy subtitle…

#9 “The Nun” [2018] <5th release>

When I first decided to start this journey, I had resolved to watch these in chronological order, not release order. I figured that the franchise was so far along that it might be interesting to check them out in a way that allows characters and events to flow and fill gaps as the films went on. That decision being made, I started in 1952 with The Nun… And good holy father above, only the strength of the trinity itself and my own stubbornness kept me sane enough to push through into the rest of the series.

2018’s The Nun marks a low watermark for not only the CCU, but horror film as a whole. It’s cheap, it’s stupid, it’s boring, and it somehow makes its 96-minute runtime feel like 3-hours. I’ve watched a handful of things this year that I really, truly disliked, but I don’t think even those were meaningless wastes of time the way that The Nun was. I always try to watch and judge movies in context of when they were made, the role they’re trying to fill, and who made them. That said, there’s simply no saving graces here.

2018 gave us Hereditary, Mandy, and Hellraiser: Judgement [Wait no, ignore that one] Freaks, so it isn’t like there weren’t good movies either in or adjacent to the genre. In terms of possession/ demon films with a religious theme we already have The Exorcist and any number of movies you can name right off the top of your head, so we’re sorta left with the context of the people who made it… Admittedly, I’m not a big James Wan fan in general; I think his movies are goofy, flat, and largely forgettable, with the exception of the first Saw film [and even that needs context]. Gary Dauberman [the other writer] has such illustrious credits as the Until Dawn movie that was universally reviled, and the 2024 Salem’s Lot adaptation that was entirely unwatchable drivel… but also the 2017 IT film and Annabelle: Creation… So what gives? Figure yourself out dude. Finally, the most forgivable of the trio is director Corin Hardy, who only has a single other film to his name, alongside a handful of music videos… So, maybe there’s hope for him at least.

This movie doesn’t deserve any more of either my or your time so, let’s conclude.

***The three stages of demonic activity: Infestation, oppression, and possession.***

The Conjuring universe is made up of 9 films that all center around the same concept: demonic possession. Some are better than others, but only two are truly worth watching, with a third that showcases everything the franchise has to offer both positively and negatively. If you watch the first three on this list and still want more, you’re not going to be disappointed because, where the CCU fails to gain any sort of points for creativity [save for The Conjuring in 2013… sort of], it sticks a near perfect landing in consistency. Similar to some bands, if you like one of these movies, you’re going to like them all in some way… Which is something I find particularly interesting because, for me, they also [almost] all suffer from exactly the same thing: A very immature, very linear, and very boring style of storytelling.

Each of these films would have been made significantly stronger if the order in which they told their events was simply a little more complex; almost every one of them starts with some short and cheap prologue that sets the events of whatever particular film in motion in such a way that the audience is effectively handed the conflict on a silver platter. It’s both extremely boring and something that sets The Conjuring OG apart from everything else here. In the 2013 film, we’re introduced to the family, we see their lives, and we see things start to go haywire as the spirits that haunt them gain more and more power. Ed and Lorraine are brought in, their investigation starts, and then things truly go off the rails and plot happens and climax occurs. It’s a good and classic haunting investigation set up, and something that the other films eschew entirely, presumably for lack of fear of being formulaic… Which is super ironic, because the formula they adopt instead is both significantly worse, and way, way more sophomoric in nature. Rather than let the audience be part of the discovery [as we are in 2013], each other film opens with whatever the presumed evil object/ cursed drama is, then hard resets and tries to establish a sort of lurking fear in the audience by showing us whatever thing from the prologue being moved into a mundane, non-haunted setting. It’s uh… it’s really boring, stupid, and obvious in ways that significantly cheapen what might be halfway decent plots had they been told slightly differently.

All in all, I think that the CCU creates two things very effectively:

Haunted house movies.
Examples of what happens when you don’t trust your audience.

I think that the CCU manages to make some really excellent, “local theater troupe puts on a haunted house” movies that serve their purpose well. They create delightful little scares, shout at you with classic spooky tropes like haunted dolls and cursed clergy, and boy howdy do they make some excellently marketable merchandise to go along with it all. On the other side, I also think they’re a great study in what a 6-rating really means here for me and Cacciatoreviews.

4/9 of these films got a 6 in some way from me, and 4/9 of these films could have been fixed up to 7’s or 8’s with some very simple adjustments to storytelling, removal of handholdy plot devices, and improvements to minor details. They’re just… Right… There, but simply can’t pull the trigger or remove their safety mechanisms because they want to make sure their audiences “get it”, and that hurts them so, so deeply in terms of overall quality. Let us discover the origin of the mirror as the Warrens encounter it instead of showing us a totally ham-fisted prologue in Last Rites. Complexify your mysteries in The Devil Made Me Do It and The Nun 2 by removing silly conveniences and adding more steps along the path. Remember that you can both have fun and be scary without being goofy or campy in things like Annabelle Comes Home… Just… Just trust that your audience wants to follow along with your stories, wants to invest in their trials and triumphs, and wants to be both confused, confounded, and confronted by both evils and goods in the same way that Ed and Lorraine were throughout their entire careers.

At the end of the day, The Conjuring universe sets itself apart from other franchises using the same set of ropes with which it hangs itself. It serves the need it seeks to serve, but doesn’t do anything more than that and, thus, may make you jump, may make you scream or shriek, but, except at its absolute best, these 9 curses wouldn’t inspire the Vatican to call upon the services of even a couple small town demonologists…

But lock your doors and keep the lights on all the same.

I Watched These So You Didn’t Have To 2025: The Conjuring Universe