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The Haunted, The Conjuring 3.5?
The real life demonologist couple Ed and
Lorraine Warren are the core of the horror movie franchise The Conjuring
Universe. The Warrens have investigated in more than a thousand of
paranormal cases throughout their career. Any of their cases can be elaborated
into a movie. Develop a franchise basing on real cases means there would never
be running out of ideas in expanding The Conjuring-verse.
Apart from basing on real cases, The
Conjuring Universe also has something unique.
First, the franchise is very young. Compare
to other movie franchises like Alien, A nightmare in the Elm Street,
or James Bond, The Conjuring Universe is less than a decade old. With
the first movie only came out in 2013, all movies were filmed using almost the
latest technology. Apart from the first 2 movies, The Conjuring and Annabelle,
which were still using 35mm negative in filming, all the following movies switched
completely to digital camera. Also, CG was already quite advance in 2013. One
may find difficult to convince oneself that the 1979 Alien actually came
after the 2017 Alien: Covenant. But putting the 2013 The Conjuring
after the 2018 The Nun wouldn’t cause much trouble.
Second, the franchise is also under tight
control. The directors and story writers are always the same group of people. Same
production companies always reappear, “New Line”, “The Safran” and “Atomic
Monster”. A tight control can minimize contradictions between movies.
All these make the franchise looks awesome
from appearance. But this also means less fun. New Line did added some salt to
it. 5 short films were officially embraced through a competition. And with the
release of the limited comics series The Conjuring: The Lover, the franchise has stretched its hand to the printing
media. But apart from those, it seems there are nothing else.
As the Warrens are real people and their
cases are claimed to be real, one can make movies based on their cases without
conflicting any copyright. Just to make it clear, the Annabelle story is
a creation by The Conjuring team and is copyrighted. But the Annabelle
doll is a real figure. You cannot copy the Annabelle storyline. But you
can create your own movie featuring the Annabelle doll, alongside with your own
storyline.
And indeed, many Warrens’ cases were
adapted on the screen decades ago.
Movies That Are (Technically) Part of the Conjuring Universe -
So, let us move away from The Conjuring
Universe and explore somewhere else.
The one that I want to talk about first is the 1991 The Haunted, a low-budget American “made-for-TV film”. It is difficult to find a copy of the movie but fortunately, the movie is available on YouTube. Let us watch it first.
This article gives a detailed analysis on
this movie.
The Lost Conjuring Movie: 1991’s The Haunted -
https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/879577-the-lost-conjuring-movie-1991s-the-haunted
How do you feel about it? Atmosphere is
very difference from those of the Conjuring-verse movies, for sure. And
the 4:3 aspect ratio keeps reminding me that the movie has never made its way
to the big screen.
The timeline of this movie is set in year 1986,
5 years after The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. You really can’t
consider this movie as a part of The Conjuring Universe and call it “The
Conjuring 3.5”. But still, Ed and Lorraine appeared in it. It is a “Warren movie”
in no doubt!
Remember that the Wikipedia has only listed out 9 notable investigations of the Warrens? The Conjuring Universe has already dramatized 5 of them. And this TV movie dramatized the 6th, the “Smurl haunting”.
How about the remaining 3 cases? Stay tuned. I will talk about them.
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