The Conjuring Universe: Ranking Every Film
How does The Nun stack up?
When the original Conjuring film debuted in 2013, few could have guessed just how prolific of a franchise it would lead to. The potential for sequels was obvious, but no one was quite expecting this.
Over the course of the last five years, the franchise has released five films including spin-offs, sequels, and prequels to constant financial success. In crafting their own version of a shared universe, this horror franchise has been able to dominate the box office in recent years.
With the release of the newest entry, The Nun, the Conjuring universe is poised to become the highest-grossing R-rated horror franchise of all time, all at only five movies in. That said, even with The Nun being guaranteed financial success, how does it stack up in terms of quality to the rest of the entries so far?
The Conjuring Universe has certainly had its fair share of ups and downs, but does The Nun reach dizzying heights, or reduce the overall bar of quality to new lows?
Across just five years, which is the best Conjuring film so far?
5. The Nun
The newest film from the Conjuring Universe is also easily the worst one.
It's a gluttony of squandered potential, as Valak herself was a breakout success in Conjuring 2, and this film's period setting offered up plenty of opportunities to deliver an entirely different beast of a horror film. Instead, The Nun falls back on the exact same haunted house horror tropes that have been this franchise's bread-and-butter for years now.
The end result is a film whose jump scares aren't remotely earned, and feel more like watered-down versions of things we've already seen done much more effectively. From its inability to pick a narrative lane, to its atrocious editing, to its insistence on inflicting 'Frenchy' on audiences across the globe in the name of a cheap tie-in, this thing is rough.
There's a big reveal in the third act that Jesus Christ's blood (yes, the actual Jesus Christ) is the MacGuffin everyone's been after this whole time, and somehow that still isn't the dumbest thing about this movie.