Since the release of the first Conjuring film back in 2013, the universe has expanded beyond
the tales of the Warrens with a spin-off trilogy for the cursed doll
Annabelle, as well as The Nun and The Curse of La Llorona.
The Conjuring universe is back to scare us again with its latest entry, The Conjuring:
The Devil Made Me Do It, with demonologist duo Ed and Lorraine Warren
investigating the real-life trial of Arne Johnson, who killed his landlord and claimed
demonic possession.
But how does the film fit into The Conjuring Universe Timeline and how does it rank amongst
all the films in the series.
In this video, I'm going to be explaining the entire timeline of
The Conjuring Universe and ranking the films at the end, giving you my perspective on which
ones are the best.
This breakdown will also contain spoilers, so if you do happen to be someone who isn't
up to date on any of The Conjuring movies, then I would recommend watching this video
after you've caught up.
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But without further ado, let's dive into The Conjuring
Universe timeline explained and ranked.
Beginning with The Nun, this gives us the first point in The Conjuring Universe timeline,
taking place in Romania in 1952.
James Wan and the film’s director, Corin Hardy,
designed the film to be an “origin of evil” type of story, which explores the genesis
of The Conjuring 2's ultimate evil, Valak.
When a nun commits suicide at the Abbey of St. Carta, people begin to suspect that the
dark powers of Valak are involved.
The film even powerfully opens on a sizzle reel of Valak’s damage, complete with Lorraine
Warren’s foreboding voiceover, taken from The Conjuring 2.
The Nun digs into the individual who is responsible for summoning not only Valak into the world,
but demons in general, depicting the birth of the first evil that initiates all of the
series’ supernatural trouble in the first place.
There’s a flashback that goes all the way back to the Dark Ages as the Duke of St. Carta’s
ritual to summon Valak gets shown in detail.
The Nun also briefly jumps back in time to 1945 to show Father Burke’s first experience
with demonic possession.
Whether the force that takes control of Daniel is Valak or some other evil, Valak still uses
Daniel’s spirit as a means to torture Burke throughout the film.
After it looks like Sister Irene and company have defeated Valak, The Nun not only shows
that they were unsuccessful, but the film then jumps to 1977 during the Warrens’ “three
stages of possession” lecture from The Conjuring 2.
The couple’s possession footage gets framed in a new light as the twisted fate of The
Nun’s Maurice is revealed.
It also shows that the Warrens initially encounter Valak much earlier than they realize and with
James Wan hinting that this could be explored more in a Nun sequel, we'll have to wait and
see how that could connect more dots.
The next movie on the timeline is Annabelle: Creation, and even though it came out after
the release of the original Annabelle and The Conjuring, it’s a prequel to both.
The film simultaneously ties up loose ends to the first Annabelle movie, as well as The
Conjuring, but it also effectively sets up the events of The Nun.
Annabelle: Creation is largely set in 1955 and follows
Samuel and Esther Mullins as they open their home up to Sister Charlotte and six orphan
girls who are in need, but the film starts with a brief detour in 1943 when the Mullins
lose their daughter, Annabelle, in a car accident.
The aim of Annabelle: Creation is to explain how the possessed doll from The Conjuring
came into existence.
Samuel Mullins is a doll-maker and after the death of his daughter, the Mullins are so
desperate to see their child again that they form a pact with a demon and allow it to possess
a doll as a host.
Janice, one of the orphans, forms an unusual friendship with the possessed doll and the
awakened evil spirit is now hungry for a human conduit.
The film’s ending solidifies how this is a prequel to the previous Annabelle film,
since the character of Janice goes on to become possessed, changes her name to Annabelle,
and gets adopted by the Higgins family.
The film then jumps 12 years in the future to the Annabelle prologue that’s set in
1967.
The Satanic cult killings that kick off that film are shown (and now have a greater context),
as well as the Form family who are the protagonists of the next movie.
Additionally, at one point in the film Sister Charlotte shows off a photo of herself and
three other nuns from back when she was in Romania, and the important thing about this
is that an unnamed Valak is also present in the background of the photo as a fellow nun.
Furthermore, while the demon that possesses the
Annabelle Doll isn’t Valak, Valak conceivably helps this evil spirit complete its goal of
possessing Janice, due to how it temporarily takes the form of a nun-like
figure.
And a final post-credits scene that takes place in 1952 features Valak, in nun form,
walking through Romania’s Abbey of St. Carta and looking as creepy as ever.
Not only is the tag a nod to the events of The Nun, but the scene is also directly pulled
from the film’s prologue.
Then came the first Annabelle film, set in 1967.
With The Conjuring containing a terrifying Annabelle short film, it’s no surprise to
see how this evil doll quickly became a fan-favourite character.
The Conjuring explains how the Warrens come in possession of the Annabelle doll, but Annabelle
sets out to show some of the doll’s carnage before she gets locked up.
Annabelle is set a mere four years before The Conjuring and it follows Mia and John
Form, two new parents who unfortunately come in contact with the doll who’s eager for
a human host.
It’s worth pointing out that Annabelle begins with the death of Annabelle Higgins, or Janice
from Annabelle: Creation.
It’s her death in the proximity of the Form’s doll that sets in motion the disturbing series
of events that destroy their lives.
The desperate parents turn to the church and the idea of an exorcism which is their last
resort.
This is ultimately what gets Annabelle in the orbit of the Warrens and Father Perez
even makes a sly reference to the Warrens as one of his solutions to the Annabelle problem,
even though he can’t reach them in time.
Annabelle ultimately concludes with a scene that’s set six months after the events of
the film and clearly leads into the incident seen in The Conjuring’s prologue.
Both Rick and Debbie from The Conjuring make a brief appearance as
Debbie’s mom buys the doll from an antique shop and of course, the rest is history.
At this point, we reach the original film that started this whole universe.
With the development of Ed and Lorraine Warren and references to them in other films, The
Conjuring marks their first appearance as they try to help the Perron family with their
supposedly haunted home.
Set in 1971, The Conjuring tells a great haunted house story that checks off most of the expected
boxes and culminates in a terrifying exorcism sequence.
James Wan and his team were trying to make a good horror film with the first Conjuring,
and not launch a layered horror universe, so it doesn’t try to set up a handful of
other properties.
The film doesn’t even feature Valak but instead creates an isolated evil spirit known
as Bathsheba.
The Conjuring benefits from not trying to overextend itself and the Warrens’ creepy
collection of haunted antiques leaves plenty of inspiration to be gathered for sequels.
And as we've mentioned plenty of times, it sets up Annabelle as one of the main demonic
antagonists of the series.
Moving on to Annabelle Comes Home, the film is nicely placed between the first two Conjuring
pictures.
Annabelle Comes Home begins in 1971, immediately after Ed and
Lorraine Warren gains ownership of the haunted doll from Debbie, the nursing student, who’s
seen in The Conjuring and teased at the end of Annabelle.
The film shows the Warrens build the blessed cage that houses
Annabelle, that’s also revealed to be made using the glass from a church window, along
with the help of The Conjuring’s Father Gordon.
After this, the film jumps a year to 1972, seeing that the Warrens have gained a bit
of attention for their work.
Other than that, the film sets the groundwork for a bunch of new demonic entities as well
as the growth of Judy Warren’s psychic abilities, which there are more hints of in The Conjuring
2, set after the events of Annabelle Comes Home.
But before we get to The Conjuring 2, Michael Chaves’ The Curse of La Llorona is currently
the film with the most tangential connection to the larger Conjuring universe,
fleshing out some important details about the characters from these films.
The most significant connection is that Father Perez, the pastor with a wavering sense of
faith, reprises his role from Annabelle.
Perez uses his chilling experience with the possessed doll to properly prepare Anna Tate-Garcia
for the spirit that’s attached herself to Anna’s family.
The Curse of La Llorona takes place during 1973 in Los Angeles, although there is a brief
prologue set in 1673 that explores La Llorona’s origins.
Furthermore, if the date didn’t already make it clear, Father Perez explicitly refers
back to his encounter with the infamous doll in Annabelle.
Not only that, but Father Perez basically implies that he’d
also like to get the Warrens to handle the Garcia family’s case, but it’s only because
they don’t have the luxury of time that he instead suggests Rafael Olvera.
The fact that this is set in 1973 also means that chronologically it would take place before
The Conjuring 2 in 1977, but after the events of all of the other films.
It remains unclear where all of this may be heading, but with Father Perez experiencing
more encounters with the paranormal, perhaps this will all culminate in a demonic showdown
where the Warrens, Olvera, and Father Perez all team up to take down the forces of evil
in future Conjuring entries.
But then we eventually get to The Conjuring 2.
Curiously, the film begins with a brief introduction that’s set in 1976 while the Warrens attempt
to investigate the infamous Amityville murders.
The Amityville case isn’t the film’s focus, but it’s during a sense there that Lorraine
Warren first experiences Valak, the Demon Nun.
After this warning, the film jumps forward to 1977 when the Hodgson family from Enfield,
London requests the Warrens’ expertise.
The Hodgson family find themselves under the attack of the ghost of Bill Wilkins, the residence’s
former tenant.
However, it’s eventually revealed that Valak is actually the real threat here and he’s
manipulated Bill Wilkins’ ghost to do his bidding.
A lot of The Conjuring 2 pits Lorraine against Valak as her biggest challenge yet and the
demon can even block Lorraine’s psychic powers.
Lorraine tries to keep Janet Hodgson safe from Valak’s clutches, but the demon also
chooses to manifest himself through the youngest Hodgson kid’s zoetrope toy.
Ed helps protect Billy from the Crooked Man, and the film ends with the zoetrope toy being
added to the Warrens’ haunted antique collection, right next to the Annabelle doll and April’s
music box from the first Conjuring.
The Conjuring 2 sees Lorraine effectively send Valak back to Hell and ends the threat
that started in the Abbey of St. Carta all the way back in The Nun.
We end this timeline on the third Conjuring movie that has just released in theatres,
taking place in 1981.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It puts Ed and Lorraine front and centre in another
real-life case taken from their files.
This one is perhaps unusual since it involves an actual real-life murder, along with centring
around the story of Arne Johnson, a young man who stabbed to death his girlfriend’s
employer and landlord, claiming he was possessed at the time.
The Warren’s had been called in before the incident to help the Glatzel family who believed
11-year-old David Glatzel was possessed after displaying increasingly strange behaviour.
A number of exorcisms took place, at which Arne was present, and at one point, Arne invited
one of David’s demons onto himself.
After this event, he began to display strange behaviour similar to
David’s and some time later committed the real-life murder.
The real events of Johnson’s case are the bookends around The Devil Made Me Do It while
the majority of the movie sees Ed and Lorraine delving into the background of the possessions
and what might have caused them.
This leads the Warrens to meet with Kastner, a former priest who had done much work into
the occult including a long term investigation into The Disciples of the Ram.
The Disciples were the satanist group who Janice-as-Annabelle
joined.
In The Devil Made Me Do It we also meet The Occultist, who we learn is responsible for
calling upon the demon who possessed David, Jessica and eventually Ed before the Warrens
manage to banish this demon who takes the Occultist with it.
We are given a brief glimpse at the Occultist’s back story, being an adopted daughter of
Kastner who kept her hidden from the world, but there is plenty more to explore here,
with not just her but also The Disciples of the Ram.
Meanwhile, Jessica’s back story is getting the comic book treatment as DC Comics has
launched DC Horror Presents, with The Conjuring: The Lover, which will delve further into the
lives of the two girls before the events of The Devil Made Me Do It.
With an unscheduled Crooked Man spin-off in the works too and all sort of other possibilities
available, this timeline is only going to become more overlapping and
complex as more entries release.
When it comes to ranking the films in The Conjuring Universe, I must say, there are
examples that stick out the most, with other films having highlights that help build
the universe.
But right now, my ranking would be as follows.
At No.8, Annabelle.
At No.7, The Nun.
At No.6, The Curse Of La Llorona.
At No.5, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.
At No.4, Annabelle Comes Home.
At No.3, Annabelle: Creation.
At No.2, The Conjuring 2.
And at No.1, The Conjuring.
Honestly, the first two Conjuring films were hard to rank at the top two spots, but I think
the original just edges it for me because of its restricted singular horror elements,
which just really helps in adding to the story and the characters.
But after more watches of The Devil Made Me Do It, I'll have to see if that goes up my
list and challenges some of the higher films on it.
But that was my video explaining the timeline for The Conjuring Universe and ranking all
the films that have released so far.
It will be interesting to see where all these films rank in a few years time, alongside
how further entries in the series fit into the timeline that has been established so
far.
Maybe we'll see more of famous characters like Annabelle and The Nun, and
maybe we will get even more horror antagonists added to the list.
Let me know what you think in the comments section down
below along with giving your personal ranking of all the films in The Conjuring Universe
so far.
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