Conjuring Timeline: All Movies in Story Order

The Nun (2018), directed by Corin Hardy, sits first in the Conjuring timeline because it is set in 1952 at the Romanian abbey of St. Carta. A nun has died there, and the Vatican sends Father Burke and a novice, Sister Irene, to find out why, guided by a local known as Frenchie. They learn that the demon Valak, which takes the form of a nun, is loose in the building and draws its power from a gateway in the catacombs that a duke's occult rituals left open. Irene closes it using the blood of Christ.

The neat victory has a hook. The film then jumps to the 1970s and reveals that Frenchie, whose real name is Maurice, was already possessed, and that his exorcism is the one Ed Warren describes in a lecture in The Conjuring (2013). That retcon gives a lecture clip in the 2013 film a full film behind it, and it ties the abbey to the Warrens' first encounter with Valak.

Annabelle: Creation (2017), directed by David F. Sandberg, is second in story order and is set mostly in 1955 at the Mullins family farmhouse. Dollmaker Samuel Mullins and his wife Esther lose their daughter Bee in a car accident, and years later they take in Sister Charlotte and six girls from a closed orphanage. Janice, weakened by polio, enters Bee's locked room and opens a closet holding a porcelain doll, which frees a demon that wears the dead girl's shape.

The ending explains the placement. Janice is adopted, takes the name Annabelle and later murders her adoptive parents, which leads straight into the 1967 opening of the first Annabelle film. Two tag scenes follow the credits, and TheWrap reported that Sandberg confirmed both. The final one is set in 1952 and shows Valak walking through the Abbey of St. Carta, according to Den of Geek, teasing The Nun (2018) in the year it is set.

The Nun II (2023), directed by Michael Chaves, is third in story order and takes place in 1956, four years after the abbey events of the first film. Sister Irene is told that a string of deaths across Europe seems tied to Valak, and she travels to Tarascon, France, with a younger nun, Sister Debra, who is unsure of her own faith. At a boarding school built in a former monastery, Maurice is possessed and the headmistress is killed.

The nuns learn that Valak is hunting descendants of St. Lucy so that it can claim her relic, hidden in the school. Irene is one of those descendants, so the demon cannot burn her, and the two nuns banish it by reciting the Words of Institution as the wine turns into the blood of Christ. A post credit scene shows Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, using archive footage from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, a nod forward to the 1981 case.

Annabelle (2014), directed by John R. Leonetti, is fourth in story order and is set in 1967, first in Santa Monica and then in Pasadena. John Form gives his pregnant wife Mia a rare porcelain doll, and that night their neighbors, the Higginses, are murdered by two cult members who then attack the Forms. The woman, Annabelle Higgins, dies in the nursery holding the doll.

When strange events follow the family to Pasadena, Mia turns to a bookshop owner, Evelyn, and a priest, Father Perez, who confirms the doll is the demon's link to the world. Evelyn gives her soul in Mia's place so that Mia's baby daughter Leah is returned. Six months later the doll is sold to a mother buying for her daughter Debbie, and it ends up in a glass case among the Warrens' artifacts.

The Conjuring (2013), directed by James Wan, is the fifth stop in story order and the point where the timeline reaches the Warrens at work. A brief 1968 scene has Ed and Lorraine deciding that a possessed doll is merely a tool for something worse. The main story then moves to 1971 and a Rhode Island farmhouse, where the Perron parents and their five daughters wake to stopped clocks, Carolyn's growing bruises and a cellar that someone had sealed off.

The Warrens trace the trouble to Bathsheba Sherman, a previous resident accused of witchcraft, who is said to have sacrificed her infant and then killed herself while cursing the land. The film presents this as a case Ed and Lorraine claimed to have worked, not as established fact. Ed leads the exorcism, Lorraine reaches Carolyn through a happy family memory, and the spirit is expelled. The Warrens leave with a music box, and that small object starts the shelf of cursed items that later films keep returning to.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019), directed by Gary Dauberman, is sixth in story order and plays out almost entirely inside the Warrens' house, across a single night. The opening shows Ed and Lorraine collecting the doll from two nurses and locking her in a blessed glass case in the artifacts room. On the drive home the doll stirs up spirits that go after Ed, a warning of what the room can do once something breaks its seal.

A year later the couple go away overnight, and their daughter Judy Warren stays behind with the babysitter Mary Ellen, who plans an early birthday party because Judy's classmates keep their distance. Mary Ellen's friend Daniela, who blames herself for a car crash that killed her father, sneaks downstairs and opens the case. The doll's demon is freed and other cursed items wake with it: the Ferryman, the Bride, a haunted board game and the Black Shuck. Bob, who likes Mary Ellen, is attacked by the Black Shuck, and a phone call warns the girls that Annabelle needs a soul to be satisfied.

The Bride possesses Daniela, and the girls answer with recorded footage of Ed performing an exorcism on it, which frees her for a while. They get the doll back into the case, and Daniela helps lock it. By morning Ed and Lorraine are home, Judy's classmates do turn up for the party, and Lorraine passes on a comforting message from Daniela's late father.

The Curse of La Llorona (2019), directed by Michael Chaves, is seventh in story order and is set in 1973 Los Angeles, after a prologue in 17th century Mexico in which a grieving mother drowns her sons. Caseworker Anna Tate-Garcia removes Patricia Alvarez's boys from her care, the boys are later found drowned, and Patricia insists a weeping spirit took them and will now come for Anna's children, Chris and Sam.

The connection to the saga is Father Perez, played by Tony Amendola, who also played the priest in Annabelle (2014). He has dealt with the earlier haunted doll case, and he sends Anna to Rafael Olvera, a former priest who now works as a folk healer. Anna destroys the spirit with a cross made from the tree beside the river where the boys died, and the last shot lingers on a puddle. The film was introduced at its SXSW premiere as the latest in The Conjuring universe, according to Syfy Wire.

The Conjuring 2 (2016), directed by James Wan, is eighth in story order. In 1976 the Warrens investigate the Amityville house, where Lorraine sees a demonic nun and a vision of Ed being impaled. In 1977 they are asked to travel to Enfield, north London, where single mother Peggy Hodgson's daughter Janet begins sleepwalking and speaking in the voice of an angry old man who claims to be Bill Wilkins.

The film presents the Enfield haunting as a case the Warrens claimed, and it includes a skeptical investigator, Anita Gregory, who shows footage of Janet faking some of the disturbances. Lorraine then realizes the old man is a front for the nun, a stronger demon hiding from her and blocking her gifts. She learns its name, Valak, and orders it back to Hell. Ed survives the fall she foresaw, and at home he adds a haunted Crooked Man toy to the collection next to the Annabelle doll.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), directed by Michael Chaves, is ninth in story order and begins in 1981 in Brookfield, Connecticut. At the exorcism of eight year old David Glatzel, Arne Johnson dares the demon to take him instead, and Ed suffers a heart attack as the possession passes over. Months later Arne stabs his landlord to death.

The Warrens help his defense by arguing he was possessed, which the film frames as a first in an American murder trial. A witch's totem in the Glatzel house and a similar killing in Danvers, Massachusetts, lead them to Isla, the daughter of a former priest named Kastner, who has been using dark magic. Isla curses Ed, and Lorraine pulls him out by reminding him of their love. Arne is still convicted of manslaughter, serves about five years and marries Debbie in prison, and a cup from the altar joins the artifact room.

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025), directed by Michael Chaves, is last in story order, even though it opens in 1964. The prologue shows the Warrens taking charge of a cursed antique mirror while Lorraine's newborn daughter Judy fights to survive. The main story then jumps to 1986, when the Smurl family in West Pittston, Pennsylvania receives the mirror as a gift and the disturbances turn violent.

Judy is now an adult in a relationship with Tony Spera, and she goes looking into the case on her own. The Warrens learn that the demon commands three other spirits and is hunting Judy in particular. Father Gordon, a priest trying to help the Smurls, is driven to his death. The Warrens recite a prayer that breaks the mirror's hold, the mirror goes to their museum, and the film closes on Judy's wedding, with Ed walking her down the aisle.

The Conjuring timeline looks scrambled because four of the six spin-offs are set before The Conjuring (2013) begins, so story order opens with a film from 2018. The Nun (2018, set in 1952), Annabelle: Creation (2017, set in 1955), The Nun II (2023, set in 1956) and Annabelle (2014, set in 1967) all reach backward, while the main films move forward from 1971 to 1986. The Conjuring: Last Rites is the odd one, because its 1964 prologue is earlier than most of the list, yet its main story in 1986 puts it at the end.

What holds the order together? Two threads. The first is Valak, who hides at St. Carta in 1952, hunts in France in 1956 and then haunts Lorraine Warren's visions in 1976. In The Conjuring 2, the demon hides from Lorraine and blocks her gift in Enfield, which is the closest the films come to explaining its interest in her. The second is the artifact room: the music box from the Perron farmhouse, the Annabelle doll, the Crooked Man toy, the Ferryman, the Bride, the board game and the Black Shuck, the cup from the altar in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and finally the Last Rites mirror. Watch for each item arriving and the room starts to read as the saga's real timeline.

A note on what the films claim. Every main case is presented as one Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed to have investigated, and the films dramatize that account, with the Enfield story even including a skeptic. Nothing here is proof of a haunting, a possession or a curse. For the record behind the claims, see the Conjuring true story page.

In my opinion, release order is the better first watch, because the Maurice reveal at the end of The Nun (2018) lands harder if you have already sat through Ed's lecture in the 2013 film. Perhaps story order works better as a second pass, once you know where each doll, mirror and cup ends up. As for what comes next, The Conjuring: First Communion is dated for September 10, 2027, according to TheWrap. If you are starting fresh, begin with the Conjuring movies in order guide, check the full list on the Conjuring movies hub, and come back here for a second viewing.