All 10 Conjuring Universe Movies Ranked

"The Conjuring" franchise has been going strong since 2013, unleashing a series of films that claim to be "inspired by true events." The wildly successful horror movies take on two different formats: a main set of stories focused on intrepid paranormal researches Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, and a set of spin-off films focused on the ghosts and ghouls they've encountered over their long careers.

"The Conjuring: The Last Rites" (read our review here) was heavily marketed as the final film in the series, but since it was instantly a huge hit (it had the biggest global horror opening of all time, in fact), that's probably not true. For now, though, there are 10 films that make up The Conjuring Universe (although some people might say there are only nine). A lot of these films have their spooky charms, but a handful should be exorcised back to hell. So let's go ahead and rank all the movies in "The Conjuring" universe from worst to best.

Right off the bat, the worst entry on this list has to come with a caveat. "The Curse of La Llorona" was not marketed as a "Conjuring" movie at first. However, once the film hit theaters in 2019, it was revealed that the character of Father Perez (Tony Amendola), who appeared in Conjuring Universe movie "Annabelle," was part of the storyline. However, after a lukewarm reception to the film from critics and fans, producers seemed quick to claim that "La Llorona" wasn't really a "Conjuring" flick. The official company line now seems to be that "The Curse of La Llorona" exists in The Conjuring Universe, but isn't a "Conjuring" movie. Sure, whatever you say!

In any case, "The Curse of La Llorona" is La Lousy — a weirdly dull ghost story loaded with some of the cheapest, loudest jumpscares ever caught on film. The usually dependable Linda Cardellini is wasted here as a mom trying to protect her kids from an evil ghost who likes to pop her face in front of the camera and yell "AHHHHH!!!" Hey, shut up, lady! This film is such a failure that it's kind of amazing that director Michael Chaves was brought over to helm multiple other (much better) "Conjuring" movies.

Annabelle the hideous demon doll was instantly iconic the minute she popped up in the opening frames of the first "Conjuring" movie, so it was inevitable that she'd end up with her own spin-off. Too bad that the first "Annabelle" movie stinks to high heaven. Directed by John R. Leonetti, who also helmed the laughably bad "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation," "Annabelle" tries to borrow a lot of vibes from '60s and '70s horror films like "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Sentinel," but all it ends up doing is reminding us how much better those movies are than this turkey.

Annabelle Wallis (who would go on to star in the far superior "Malignant") plays a new mom who starts experiencing paranormal activity in her new apartment. Maybe it has something to do with the ugly, ugly murder doll she found? Spoiler alert: It does, but I dare you to care! Annabelle is kind of at a disadvantage here, because she's not a killer doll like Chucky, so she doesn't get up and run around and kick her little doll legs. She mostly just sits in rocking chairs and looks at people with her stupid glass eyes. Scary!

The Nun made her debut in "The Conjuring 2," where she was revealed to actually be an ancient demon named Valek (or, as Lorraine Warren hilariously calls her at one point, "the Marquis of Snakes!"). Like Annabelle, the very visage of a scary demon nun was instantly memorable and warranted its own film. But while "The Nun" boasts some genuinely fantastic gothic atmosphere and a throaty, ominous musical score courtesy of Abel Korzeniowski, the film is strangely ... boring. You'd think it would be impossible to make a movie a demon nun boring, and yet, here we are.

After an admittedly good, creepy prologue in which we watch a non-demon nun hang herself, "The Nun" finds a priest (Demián Bichir) and a young nun (Taissa Farmiga, sister of main "Conjuring" star Vera Farmiga) sent to investigate strange happenings at a monastery in Romania. The Nun keeps creeping around in the dark background, and sure, that's kind of scary. But it really doesn't add up to much. If you ask me, it's all a bunch of nun-sense! But seriously folks, we live in a strange world of pain and misery, don't we?

After the snoozefest that was "The Nun," it was a pleasant surprise when "The Nun 2" turned out to be an improvement. While the first film was oddly boring, the sequel moves at a fast pace and keeps your interest from start to finish. Once again Taissa Farmiga's Sister Irene finds herself facing off against that darn nun. Look, I'll be honest: this movie is pretty low on plot and story. You'd think that might count against it. Instead, it works in its favor, because director Michael Chaves ramps up the nun mayhem and gives us surprisingly stylish scares. There's one sequence where the Nun materializes via magazines on a newspaper stand that is extremely cool and clever.

"The Nun 2" also ups the gore factor from the first film, which is a plus. However, one of the problems here, as mentioned in our review, is that the film has to find a way to connect itself to "The Conjuring 2," which is where the Nun made her debut, and that turns out to be a little tricky.

Also, I'm not sure you can do much more with this character at this point, which is why we probably haven't heard about "The Nun 3" in the years since this hit theaters. The real missed opportunity here is that the franchise never found a way to bring the two Farmiga sisters together in the same movie. Sure, the characters exist in stories being told decades a part, but some smart screenwriter should've been able to crack it. (To be fair, Ed and Lorraine appear in a mid-credits scene in this film, but it's via leftover footage from "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.")

Of the four main "Conjuring" films that focus on Ed and Lorraine Warren, "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It" is the weakest because it breaks with the established formula. That formula usually has a family being haunted by ghosts and/or demons and the Warrens showing up to help them. "The Devil Made Me Do It," however, changes things up and throws in a murder trial. And here's the thing: The murder in the film is based on a real murder that actually happened, and the accused killer, a young man named Arne Johnson, really went into court and claimed that he was possessed by a demon when he committed the deed.

Using that tragic story as the basis for a popcorn horror movie feels a little icky, although the film does try to distance itself from the real events in certain ways. As director Michael Chaves told us during an interview around the release of the film, "There were things that actually made [the victim] look very bad, things that he did that day that just did not look good. And it was tricky to thread that needle, because Arne murdered him. Arne took his life. And it was important that we didn't want to make [the victim] look like a bad guy, because it would have been very easy for us to tell us the straight story, but it [might] make him look like a villain, and then it almost starts to justify [the] murder."

The film also has the Warrens eventually facing off against a human adversary, an occultist played by Eugenie Bondurant — she's the one summoning up the film's supernatural mumbo-jumbo that directly caused Arne to commit murder. It's one thing to have Ed and Lorraine fight ghosts; that's their job, after all. It's another to have them doing battle with a flesh and blood human like they're cops or superheroes. It just feels wrong.

After the wet fart that was the first "Annabelle," the franchise course-corrected by bringing in "Lights Out" director David F. Sandberg to helm the prequel-sequel "Annabelle: Creation." Sandberg is very skilled at creating meticulous scares — he has a whole bunch of excellent short horror films on his YouTube page that he shot in his apartment highlighting how good he is at this sort of thing — so he's able to jolt some life into this series.

As the title suggests, "Annabelle: Creation" shows us how that busted-looking doll came into being after she was created by a grieving dollmaker (Anthony LaPaglia) who watched his beloved daughter (named Annabelle!) run down by a car. The dollmaker and his reclusive wife (Miranda Otto) eventually open their home to a bunch of orphan girls, which turns out to be a big mistake, because these kids end up unleashing a demon that starts killing everyone. The end results are genuinely creepy and make the events of the first film even more embarrassing.

Once again, Annabelle the doll really doesn't do much — she just sits around, or slumps to the floor, or gets tossed into a closet. It's kind of impressive that they built an entire franchise around such a lazy doll, really.

The latest, and presumably last entry in the series (until Warner Bros. takes a look at that outlandish box office haul and greenlights another movie, of course), "The Conjuring: Last Rites" really wants to hammer home that these movies aren't just about the scares — they're about the love story of Ed and Lorraine Warren. The undying love between the Warrens is on full display here as they grapple with the fact that they're getting older and slightly irrelevant (the film is set in 1986, and now all anyone wants to ask them about is the movie "Ghostbusters").

To hammer home the themes of love and family, "Last Rites" also has the Warrens' daughter Judy (who has been played by various child actors throughout the series) all grown up (now played by Mia Tomlinson) and engaged to marry her awkward boyfriend Tony (Ben Hardy). Once again, the film follows the standard formula: the Warrens have to help a family being haunted. But they take a long time to get there, mostly because Lorraine is worried that Ed's heart condition is too serious for them to jump back into ghost hunting.

"Last Rites" is a little bloated (there's no reason for this thing to be over 2 hours long), but the scares are fun and the emotional angles really work — the epilogue, which gives Ed and Lorraine a Happily Ever After send-off, is quite touching (as long as you ignore all the rumors about the real Ed and Lorraine Warren).

"The Conjuring 2" goes for broke, with director James Wan being bold enough to open the movie with the Warrens investigating the infamous Amityville Horror house. After that, they (eventually) head off to England to look into ghosts tormenting a single mother and her many troubled children. After the first film established the basic formula, it's interesting to see how easily "The Conjuring 2" slips back into it — the film feels like putting on an old, comfy sweater. An old, comfy sweater that's also scary.

Once again, we get plenty of memorable scary ghosts and demons (how have they not made a Crooked Man spin-off yet?), but the real meat and potatoes of the film involves how the Warrens emotionally bond with the family they're helping. At one point, Ed learns from Peggy (Frances O'Connor), the matriarch of the family, that her ex-husband took all the records when he left her and the kids. Ed's solution is to immediately bust out his guitar and start playing some Elvis tunes for everyone. It's the type of charming, quaint moment that most other modern horror movies would avoid for fear of being "cringe," but "The Conjuring 2" leans into it whole-heartedly. These aren't just scary movies. They're movies about genuinely good people helping each other out of impossible situations.

You might be surprised that the third "Annabelle" movie ranks so high on this list, but "Annabelle Comes Home" is a total blast. This is less about Annabelle and more about that darn museum the Warrens keep in their home loaded up with cursed and haunted objects. What if some clueless teenager accidentally unleashed all the evil forces of that room? Bad stuff would happen, obviously.

In "Annabelle Comes Home," the Warrens make a quick cameo as they bring Annabelle home to the museum and lock her up in a glass case with a sign that says DO NOT OPEN. Yeah, I'm sure that'll do it. Since the Warrens are always needed elsewhere, they eventually get called away on a case, which means they have to leave their lonely young daughter Judy (child actor pro Mckenna Grace) in the care of trusted babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman). What should be a fun, carefree weekend goes off the rails when Marry Ellen's troublemaking bestie Daniela (Katie Sarife) pops by, curious about the Warrens, who have become local celebrities due to their ghost aventures. Sure enough, Daniela eventually gets into that damn room, opens Annabelle's glass cage, and all hell breaks loose! Annabelle uses her demon powers to bring all the cursed stuff to life.

Now, logically, the three ladies should just leave the house and flee to safety. But there wouldn't be much of movie if that did that. So instead, they have to stick around, face their fears, and stop Annabelle. That means encountering a bunch of ghouls and cursed objects, like a TV that predicts the future by a few minutes, a haunted board game (!), a cursed wedding dress, and my personal favorite, the Ferryman, who appears to be some sort of serial killer who is also a ghost. It's all very silly but's also a lot of fun, the equivalent of a Halloween haunted house you walk through clinging to your significant other's arm, laughing nervously, your heart pounding as you anticipate the next scare.

Obviously, the film that started it all is going to come in first. It's genuinely impressive that James Wan is responsible for creating three wildly successful horror franchises — "Saw," "Insidious," and "The Conjuring." Of those three, "The Conjuring" feels like the classiest, the most grown-up. It feels like it's aimed more at adults rather than teenagers looking for a quick scare. This first "Conjuring" is particularly noteworthy because it ended up with an R-rating — but not because of gore, or nudity, or foul language. No, the MPA awarded it that rating simply because they thought it was so darn scary.

To be fair, with "The Conjuring," Wan and company weren't exactly doing anything new. There had been plenty of haunted house movies before, and there had also been plenty of movies about paranormal investigators. And yet, the filmmaker, working with writers Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes, managed to find the sweet spot to make something that felt fresh and new and exciting. And yes, scary. The success lies in the way the film gets us to care about the characters. These aren't disposable horny teens we want to see bumped off by a slasher. This is a working class family being tormented by ghosts — we feel bad for these people, and we understand why they can't move (they can't afford it).

Of course, the real secret sauce here is the inclusion of Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens were indeed real people, and while the real paranormal investigators are steeped in controversy, the highly fictionalized Warrens introduced in the first "Conjuring" movie are wonderful characters. As played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, they're a loving couple willing to go above and beyond to help people (free of charge!) fight the forces of darkness. The film also takes time to show us that the Warrens do more than battle ghosts: Lorraine helps with the laundry, and Ed helps fix a broken down car. It's like they become a part of the family. They genuinely care about the people they're helping. It's a winning formula that the films would stick with going forward, but the first film did it best, aided by Wan's snappy direction (an early one-take shot where the camera glides around all the rooms of the haunted house as the family moves in is a stunner).