The Conjuring Universe is a Disappointment

Last Halloween I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus (1 & 2), all the Chucky movies (still gives me nightmares), and several Halloween classics like Nightmare on Elm Street. This spooky season my husband and I decided to watch all the movies in The Conjuring Universe in chronological order and overall I was disappointed.

When we first decided to set out on this horror film marathon, I knew all along it would be turned into a blog post and planned on critiquing each movie. However, now that we are done, I just don’t think the movies are worth individual critiques, so instead I will just talk about what I thought and why.

Why I didn’t like the movies…

Setting out to watch all these movies (click here for the list in chronological order) I hadn’t watched many of them. I had seen the original The Conjuring and La Lllorona, and once we started watching it I realized I had also seen Annabelle: Creation. I also had seen bits of The Nun, but that was on in the background on Thanksgiving (yes you read that right, Thanksgiving with Marines is an interesting adventure), and I hadn’t been paying attention so I didn’t count that.

Besides that, I hadn’t seen the rest of the universe and the movies I had seen, I had only seen once and it had been years, so I felt like I was going into this with basically a blank slate. I was looking forward to a few days of fun jump scares and nights with little sleep.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, I encountered a handful of jump scares, predictable storylines (worse than other horror films I think), and overall boredom. The movies just didn’t scare me or even really entertain me.

I had high hopes. So many people have described these movies as some of the scariest, but I wasn’t remotely disturbed.

Why the movies didn’t scare me…

I have my theories on why the movies didn’t scare me and if I felt more confident in my knowledge and research and ability to discuss Christianity and Catholicism I would go into more detail, but since I don’t I will just say that I think the scare factor for these movies is based way too strongly in the Catholic religion that I personally was able to poke holes in a lot of it.

If I had to choose the best…

If I had to choose the best movie or best series in the universe I would suggest watching just The Conjuring (1,2 & 3). I still didn’t think these movies were scary but The Conjuring trilogy had the best storylines and in my opinion, was filmed the best.

Even though real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren may be questionable, I really liked the characters in the movie. The way they were cast and written, the way the actors played the roles made me really like them and care about their story.

The Ed and Lorraine characters made The Conjuring movies an enjoyable experience and my husband and I have even had extensive conversations about how we probably would have enjoyed the series much more if they had made Ed and Lorraine the foundation of the movies rather than the hauntings.

Image Cover from Rotten Tomatoes