03-008 The role of The Amityville Horror in The Conjuring Universe

03-008
The role of The Amityville Horror in The Conjuring Universe

The Warrens have investigated thousands of paranormal cases throughout their career. A common question from skeptics is, are those cases real?

Authenticity of their investigation is always a controversial topic. However, since the Warrens themselves claimed that those cases are real, anyone can adapted their stories because fact has no copyright. Authenticity is not a concern here.

In fact, long before the birth of The Conjuring Universe, we already have 2 TV movies The Demon Murder Case & The Haunted adapting Warrens’ investigations. The former adapted the “Trail of Arne Cheyenne Johnson” while the latter adapted the “Smurl family haunting”. The Warrens somehow appeared in both movies. A further movie The Haunting in Connecticut adapted the “Snedeker house” case and TV miniseries The Enfield Haunting adapted the “Enfield poltergeist” investigation, though the Warrens did not appear in any of them.

With all those foregoers, we saw the rather new The Conjuring Universe tends to set foot on somewhere else, and aims to develop a new storyline from there. “Annabelle” & “Rhode Island Haunting” were never adapted. “Enfield” and “Trail of Arne Cheyenne Johnson” were adopted before but their innovators were never any big hits.

Finding a new patch to set foot on is a smart move. As whenever there are 2 movies adapting the same story, people will start comparing. Just one question, if the Warrens are the protagonists, how about their most famous case “The Amityville Horror”?

At the end of The Conjuring, Father Gordan called the Warrens

At the end of The Conjuring, Father Gordan asked the Warrens to look into a case on Long Island. Everyone then think The Conjuring 2 would talk about “The Amityville Horror”. It did. But if you have watched the movie, you will know that the Warrens just merely appeared inside the Amityville house. Apart from the séance which was performed inside the house, the rest of the movie moved to London. The Conjuring 2 gives no explanation on what has happened before in Amityville, assuming everyone knows the story of the DeFeo and the Lutz families. And the movie never mentioned if the Warrens has solved the problem in Amityville or not.

At the beginning of The Conjuring 2, the Warrens arrived at Amityville

Someone actually asked Wan his intention on the opening of The Conjuring 2. “Are you going to make another movie on Amityville?” And this is how he answered:

 “We actually even hinted at the end of the first movie, we teased that they were going to investigate a certain house out that way. We knew we wanted to have the Warrens go and tackle the Amityville case, but I also didn’t want to make another Amityville movie for the entire film, because we’ve seen a bazillion [versions] of that story, right, and I don’t think I have anything new to tell.”

Why The Conjuring 2 Isn't Only Focusing On The Amityville Horror House -

https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Why-Conjuring-2-Isn-t-Focusing-Amityville-Horror-House-122627.html

Horror movie fans will know. The first Amityville adaptation The Amityville Horror in 1979 was a great success. But things started to become out of control since then, especially in the recent decade. Different people started making their own sequels. Now, we have more than 30 movies using the name “Amityville”.

It is again a very smart move. By adding the five minutes séance shot at the beginning of The Conjuring 2, Wan officially embraced the Amityville haunting into The Conjuring-verse. But that’s all he would do. There will be no more talk on the Amityville haunting. If you want to know the Amityville story, watch those movies made by the others. There are plenty out there.

So, it is like pulling an extension lead into the garden. He did not own those Amityville movies. They are not a part of his house. But you are welcome to plug them in!

In the next posts, I will talk about which Amityville movies can fit into the universe and how well they can fit in.

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