While Marvel and DC continue to hash it out for the place of
the kingpin of mainstream superhero cinema, horror has its own monarchy: The
Conjuring Universe. Not since the days of Saw consistently blowing up the
Halloween schedule has James Wan had this tight of a stranglehold on mainstream
horror, having fingerprints on The Conjuring, Annabelle, last year’s The Nun,
not to mention outliers like the Insidious series as well as the bane of my existence that is
Lights Out. Today’s film technically doesn’t fall under the Conjuring canon, but
through a brief inclusion of Annabelle herself, it still has a marked place within it. Think of it as the Redman to the larger universe’s Wu-Tang Clan, or
(in more genre-appropriate terms) what The Marked Ones was for Paranormal Activity.
