Warning: following contains mild spoilers for The Conjuring and plenty of other horror movies.
Anyone who saw the most recent horror flick The Conjuring, which came out today, was undoubtedly thinking the same thing I was: “This is good and creepy and all that fun stuff, but what if this were to run up against another horror movie?” That’s a perfectly reasonable question that I spent a great deal of time pondering over myself. Here are some suggestions:
- Paranormal Activity
Nearly six years ago, Paranormal Activity burst into the public consciousness making countless audiences scream like little girls and squirm in their seats ever since. Admittedly, Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring share some things in common: an underlying fear of being in your own house is ever-present and a psychic is brought in to assist in the matter, a piss-poor pyschic, but a psychic nonetheless. Now, one of the standouts from The Conjuring the paranormal-investigating couple Ed and Lorriane Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively). A cross-over could be something as simple as bringing these two in to investigate “Toby”, the demonic presence from the Paranormal Activity franchise. Just have them investigate Toby; we could have this whole thing solved by the very first movie. Granted, Toby might kill them, but that’s a risk worth taking, right, guys? - Child’s Play
There’s a scene in The Conjuring that shows a room in the Warren household where they’ve kept all of the haunted objects that they’ve come across over the years (imagine Warehouse 13). One such item was a demented little doll known as Annabelle. Remember Child’s Play? What if everyone’s favorite serial killer Charles Lee Ray, instead of going into the Chucky doll, decided to shake things up a bit and possess Annabelle? On the other hand, Annabelle was already possessed by a demon in The Conjuring, so perhaps Chucky and Annabelle go on a little rampage of their own. Now that’s entertainment. - Ghostbusters
It’s been some time since anyone has heard anything from The Ghostbusters, but they’re finally back on the job. Back to bustin’ some ghosts and doing their thing. They get a report of a haunted house, they go check it out. Good times, right? This isn’t your normal haunted house. There are all kinds of things going on in this house and they’re nowhere equipped to deal with such things. They realize very quickly that they’re going to need some reinforcements in the form of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Together, the two teams hope to be able to get to the bottom of whatever is wrong with the house and pray that it’s only ghosts they have to deal with. - Halloween
A great many movies have been spent in the sole purpose of killing the terrifying serial killer Michael Myers. What would happen if you were actually able to kill this demented psychopath? Someone like Myers is filled with way too much to simply go to heaven or hell. No, someone like that would logically become a ghost and why not? He spent most of his life as a “person” killing people”, so wouldn’t he spend his afterlife that very same way. Given that, bring in the Warrens and their little team of investigators to check out Mikey killing all sorts of people in his childhood home. Granted, that’s a little too much Halloween: Resurrection meets Thir13en Ghosts, but it could still work. - Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil
In 2011, we were introduced to two lovable, good-natured, but extremely stupid hillbillies called Tucker and Dale (played by Firefly‘s Alan Tudyk and Reaper‘s Tyler Labine, respectively). After the events of the movie where college kids started dying around them, Dale got together with college girl Alison (played by Katrina Bowden), and killed a homicidal frat boy that was trying to kill the trio, sad times hit our boy Dale when Alison leaves him to go back to college (and, you know, all her friends are kinda dead. It’s a little traumatizing). To liven Dale’s spirits, Tucker takes Dale to this new house that he just bought. Little does Tucker know, however, that his new shack has a sordid history. Basically, the house is haunted. Forty years prior, a family called the Perrons. That family had some otherworldly encounters, apparently, turned tail, ran, and no one’s lived in it since. That is, until Tucker and Dale arrive. Cue screeching violin music.