Liminality and the Hidden Aspects of The Conjuring

The films The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 focuses on two demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, while they help two families with supernatural entities. In the Gothic genre, the traditional location is often a medieval setting of a castle or ancient location. These two films are presented as horror films but contain an overarching Gothic mode. This article explores how the modern family homes that are presented become the sites of liminal hauntings and ultimately the destabilizing of the family unit. This disruption of the family reflects cultural anxieties around family units that are often seen in popular culture texts, where the unnatural events reflect the decay that each family experiences in the horror genre. The Conjuring films therefore reflect modern versions of the Gothic mode within generic horror films