Conflict makes for great drama. It's why marriages in soap operas rarely last. It's this backbone that makes a story interesting, and in the world of horror, relationships are often doomed to fail. Looking at horror franchises, relationships don't tend to stay the course. Just look at the saga of Dewey and Gail in Scream. A perfect will-they/won't-they that by the fifth entry has sadly entered into the won't-they camp. Similarly, as much as we might have thought Julia and Ray would have made it, the events of I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) confirm they split up. 

What sets The Conjuring universe apart from other horror franchises isn't just that it has a somewhat anthological nature where the mainline saga of the Warrens gives way to all manner of spin-offs, but that the two central figures—Ed and Lorraine Warren—are a middle-aged couple who are utterly devoted to one another.

Admittedly, James Wan's horror franchise posits itself as “based on a true story”, and yes there really was a paranormal investigative couple called Ed and Lorraine Warren, who did genuinely stay married and utterly devoted to one another until Ed's death in 2006. Lorraine would pass away in 2019 after two Conjuring movies had been released.

Even if the Warrens claim that what they investigated were real cases of demonic possession, the film series plays fast and loose with the events of what happened. Case in point, the Warrens are portrayed as being heavily involved in the infamous Enfield poltergeist case, when the reality is they only visited once.

But marketing tactics aside, what really sets The Conjuring apart from other franchises is how seriously it treats the marriage between its central couple. Perhaps Wan's best choice and the franchise's ace in the hole is that Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, two wonderful performers in their own right, have that all-too-difficult-to-cultivate chemistry. You believe that Ed and Lorraine are utterly besotted with one another even after all this time.

Wan, and his actors, take Ed and Lorraine's passion for each other seriously enough that their 2016 sequel The Conjuring 2, pads out its impressive two and a half hour scare fest with sequences that examine their love for one another. Romance, in the old Hollywood sense, is rare enough as it is in cinema now, but to see a horror film that throws demonic nuns and creepy stop-motion spectres at you, stop and allow two people to express how they discovered their kinship is the kind of strange alchemy that the series works best with.

The Conjuring 2 pauses the story of the Hodgson family's haunting to allow Lorraine to explain how, when she was a young woman plagued by visions of horrible demonic scenes, she turned to help and found only one person believed her. When pressed on what happened to the person, Lorraine, played with wistful joy by Farmiga, informs the Hodgson clan that she married that person.

In the same film, we see Ed attempt to bring joy to the house, a bid to expel the demonic presence, by serenading the family with Elvis Presley's classic Can't Help Falling in Love. It stops the film to allow Ed to musically express his utterly hopeless devotion to his wife. Not only this, but it also allows us to remember that Patrick Wilson has a beautiful singing voice. The scene is echoed at the end of the film when the Warrens return home and dance to the same song. Instead of the classic horror cliche of ending on one final jump scare, the film allows the audience to instead embrace the little victories of life that come from finding your person.

This relationship is shown time and time again to be the strongest form of defence against the power of evil. Each film shows the dark forces trying to pry the Warrens apart, not understanding that their bond is unbreakable. In an age where old-fashioned ideas are seen as embarrassing and not cool, for Wan and co to decide to instead focus on two people who believe in one another gives the series its beating heart.

This is clear in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, where a case of possession leads Ed to suffer a heart attack that puts him in hospital. While in the previous films forces worked to split Ed and Lorraine up, locking doors or burning entry points so that they were away from one another, the third film has the dark entity possess Ed. Seeing someone the audience has invested love for and understands the love they have for their wife become someone bent on killing her is more horrific than anything the film could conjure by way of monsters. It's no shock then that when the moment comes for the possessed Ed to kill Lorraine, he is brought back to his senses by Lorraine reminding him of what they mean to each other.

All of this leads to The Conjuring: Last Rites, the supposed final film about the Warrens, which posits that it is the case that ended it all. The question remains: will this be the case that causes a retirement for the Warrens, who seem almost fanatically committed to fighting demons, or will one die? It would be a shame if the film split Ed and Lorraine up, and yes, while the film series is apparently based on true events, it has always played fast and loose with facts.

Characters like Ed and Lorraine, as they are in the film, stand apart from other franchises by their unfaltering love, and the fact that the series treats their faith and their marriage with nothing but respect and reverence. It could be that we might be parting with Ed (given he's already suffered a near-fatal heart attack and his real-life counterpart died first), but in the celluloid world, it might be more cathartic for an audience if, just for once, the good guys get their happy ending with no caveats.

After all, The Conjuring series has taught the world two very important facts: if there is evil, there must also be good. And if you have your person, there is nothing you cannot defeat. 

Amen.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is in UK cinemas from 5 September.

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