The Warren Files, or “Based on a True Story”

The second chapter considers how the film was marketed as being based in reality and rooted in the Warrens’ identity as the nation’s preeminent paranormal investigators. The chapter compares Ed and Lorraine Warren with their fictional counterparts. It then argues that The Conjuring also maintains its veneer of “reality” by employing techniques from and references to paranormal investigations on television and film, wearing its religion on its sleeve while obscuring the genuine religious inaccuracies within the film, and using the bad witch trope despite all historic evidence against it. The Conjuring does not so much use and present reality as employ popular culture’s versions of reality (and ghosts, religion and witches) in order to craft a horrific, scary narrative.