What The Conjuring Universe Looks Like Before Special And Visual Effects

The core of the Conjuring Universe is the "true story" case files of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the films. "The Conjuring" kicked things off with a classic haunted house story about the Perron family: a married couple and their five daughters who, in the 1970s, moved into an old farmhouse and began to experience frightening ghostly phenomena. The most malevolent spirit that allegedly haunted the house was that of Bathsheba Sherman, who had lived on the property in the 1800s and was rumored to have been a Satanist who was involved in the death of a neighbor's child. 

In the film, Bathsheba was played by composer Joseph Bishara, who also wrote the score for "The Conjuring" and several other movies in the franchise. Bishara's look was achieved using extensive facial prosthetics and dark contact lenses. One of the most memorable scares in the film involves Lorraine feeling some dark vibes underneath a tree in the farmhouse's yard, and turning to see Bathsheba's feet hanging behind Ed, marking the spot where the witch died. That 50-foot tree was actually built from scratch by the production team, and Bishara did indeed spend a day dangling to create the scare.

New Line Cinema

Meanwhile, Lili Taylor underwent her own transformation as Carolyn Perron is tormented and eventually possessed by the spirit of Bathsheba. The 1963 horror film "The Haunting" was a major inspiration for James Wan on "The Conjuring," and Taylor had starred in a critically-panned, CGI-heavy remake back in 1999. Taylor had hoped that her imagination might be able to fill in the blanks on the "Haunting" set, but "unfortunately, that just didn't happen," she told Collider. "You start to see everything, but that was abstract to me because it was all green screen. So, to me I was just seeing cones and lights."

"The Conjuring" offered a much more authentic haunted house experience, right down to Taylor's transformation into the possessed Carolyn. The make-up team designed multiple stages of possession, starting with very small details that the audience might not actively notice. "I have these contacts in, these brown contacts and they're so subtle," Taylor revealed. "People are looking at me and they're just cocking their head a little bit, they're not quite sure what's wrong with me, because I'm sort of dead in the eyes."

The first unfortunate possession victim in "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It" is eight-year-old David Glatzel, played by Julian Hilliard. For the opening scene where the Warrens attempt to exorcize a demon from David's body, however, the physical performance mostly came from contortionist Emerald Gordon Wulf. She wore a wig, glasses, and the character's costume, and the visual effects team later completed the disguise by digitally masking her face with Hillard's.

Are contortionists born or made? The answer is "both." They are typically born with the genetic trait of hypermobility, giving them a baseline of extra flexibility in their joints, but it takes a lot of training and practice to able to twist their bodies into extreme shapes like the one seen above. "I love scaring people," Wulf says proudly in a behind-the-scenes featurette for the movie. "It's one of my favorite things about contortion. They don't think it's natural, they don't think a body should be able to do that."

Though James Wan only directed the first two "Conjuring" movies, his love of practical effects and achieving scares in-camera has remained a core part of the franchise. It's not uncommon in horror movies for characters to lose their limbs, heads, or even be cut in half, and since chromakey technology became commonplace this is usually achieved by having the actor wear a green or blue sleeve over the body part that's missing, so it can be removed digitally later on. But for a scene in "Annabelle: Creation" where the top half of Esther Mullins (Miranda Otto) wakes up from death to chase Linda (Lulu Wilson), director David Sandberg instead decided to cast a double amputee as Otto's body double so that no digital trickery would be needed. The role of the undead Mrs. Mullins was played by Katy Sullivan, a Paralympian and bilateral above knee amputee.

Linda escapes the crawling corpse by climbing into a dumb waiter (always a bad idea in a horror movie), only for the contraption to get stuck between two floors. The behind-the-scenes shot above shows how the tense scene of Linda climbing up the dumb waiter with Annabelle (Samara Lee) hot on her heels was filmed using a horizontal set. In a behind-the-scenes clip, Sandberg instructs Wilson to kick her legs up behind her to create the illusion that she's dangling from the rope instead of lying on top of it. 

When Valak returned in "The Nun II," she had some back-up in the form of a demon goat played by Aaron-John "AJ" North. Transforming into this devilish creature wasn't as simple as just pulling on a mask. "The face is made up of many composite parts so that I can articulate my mouth, I can move my eyebrows," North explains in behind-the-scenes footage. The prosthetics and make-up took four or five hours to apply each day, and an hour to remove, but it was worth it for a look that allowed North to snarl at his prey even through the disguise. 

One of the key scare scenes featuring the demonic goat required a lot of dexterity on North's part in order to avoid breaking his neck. Not only did he have to run around on all fours using stilts that extended the length of his arms, he had to do this while chasing a character down a wooden spiralling staircase. "AJ is an incredible creature performer and has incredible endurance," director Michael Chaves enthused. "He was running for days in this goat contraption." 

Apparently the devil doesn't get tired.