One of the major selling points behind The Conjuring trilogy has been the ‘real’ angle, with each installment based on a case investigated by Ed and Lorriane Warren, played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson on the big screen. Of course, plenty of creative license has been taken in bringing those tales to life, but it’s a relatively unique hook for the horror genre nonetheless.
The first movie saw the intrepid duo investigate the claims of the Perron family, who moved into a Rhode Island farmhouse in the early 1970s and soon believed themselves to be hounded by an evil presence, and it turned out that a rumored Satanist named Bathsheba Sherman had lived on their property a century prior.
The Conjuring 2 then tackled the Enfield poltergeist, with two sisters purportedly being terrorized by a malevolent spirit, although independent investigators believed it to be a hoax. Current box office champion The Devil Made Me Do It, meanwhile, revolves around the murder trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, the first court case in United States history where demonic possession was used as the basis for the defense.
Ed Warren passed away in 2006, seven years before The Conjuring was released, and in a new interview to promote the third chapter, Wilson revealed what he would have liked to ask his counterpart.
“I just look at everything like right in front of me. I don’t think about, ‘Oh, if I only had the chance’. I think I would be so nervous at this point, because I feel like I’m crafted my own version of him in my head. That I wouldn’t want him to screw up. It’s like when you meet a rock star, you’re like, ‘I wanna meet you, but I kind of don’t cause you may totally blow it for me’. No, that would be super fun. I would love to just drill him about the smallest little things that no one would ever notice. Like, ‘I always carried a knife in my pocket’, or something like that. Which he probably did, actually, now that I really think about it. He seems like one of those guys.
Lorraine Warren at least saw the first two Conjuring movies come to fruition before she died in 2019, and she was fully supportive of James Wan’s vision, as well as giving Wilson and Farmiga the inside track on how to approach their performances based on her own experiences, but the stars have nonetheless made the roles their own, and the stories might not be over just yet.
