The Conjuring vs. Insidious
While rewatching movies from the The Conjuring and Insidious universes, I noticed a recurring pattern involving the haunted families.
What stood out was the franchises' approach to their supernatural storylines, particularly when it comes to gender representation.
So many daughters in The Conjuring movies!
The Perron family in The Conjuring (first movie in the franchise) has five daughters. The Hodgson family in The Conjuring 2 has two daughters and two sons (although Janet becomes the main focus), and the Smurl family in Last Rites (technically The Conjuring 4) has four daughters!
Then there's the first Annabelle movie, which revolves around Mia, a young mother, and her baby daughter, Leah. In Annabelle: Creation, the movie revolves around a group of six orphaned girls and a nun. In Annabelle Comes Home, three girls dominate the storyline.
And let's not forget The Nun, where the main character is Sister Irene, while the evil entity, Valak, takes the form of a terrifying nun. Although this isn't about a family with daughters, it's another example of how female characters dominate the supernatural storytelling.
The Perron, Hodgson, and Smurl families are real people with really that many daughters, so the producers didn't actually invent their family compositions.
Still, when I see so many daughters, young girls and women repeatedly becoming central to the hauntings, it makes me wonder why the franchise seems to gravitate towards these storylines.
Insidious seemed to revolve around a father and son
Meanwhile, Insidious, particularly the Lambert family storyline spanning the first, second and fifth movies, revolves around a father and son, Josh and Dalton, who both become targets of supernatural forces.
Then again, Insidious doesn't seem entirely male-centred, especially when the franchise explores the past of psychic Elise and introduces other haunted female characters.
But the contrast is rather striking, isn't it? Why does one horror universe repeatedly return to mothers and daughters, while another builds much of its identity around fathers and sons?
I'm not a movie critic or enthusiast, and this isn't meant to be some serious analysis of gender representation in horror movies. It's simply something that caught my attention while rewatching these films. And now that I've noticed it, I can't seem to unsee it! Haha.
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