Something’s that’s often difficult for the self-identified progressive or liberal to accept is when they connect with art that is fundamentally conservative in its moral framework and worldview. It generally doesn’t happen with film that outwardly promotes itself as conservative because it either takes a sneeringly didactic approach to distilling its world view (SOUND OF FREEDOM) or its indulgent hagiography that doesn’t take place in a world recognizable as real (REAGAN).

But mainstream audiences have thrilled for a decade to The Conjuring series’ depiction of The Warrens’ very traditional and loving marriage as the dam that holds back the chaotic influence of demons and such. The Warrens are Catholic and the series has never really soft pedaled that and the films have always centered the home as personal empire and castle. Traditional Western Catholic notions of good rallying against demons. If you’ve followed the talking points of the right in the last several years you know they’ve taken to referring to existential threats as demons. So we have these films centering the primacy of traditional family values and and reducing their problems to something simple, definable.

There’s the power of this particular conservative fantasy. The sauce that connects it to a centrist and liberal viewership is that we wish our problems were simple and easy to define. Do I pine for a Catholic marriage? No. But I pine for love. Do I see a person’s home as their castle? No. I think that’s a sticky perspective that can be used to justify violence but I do want my home cozy, warm and familiar.

When we see Ed Warren standing over a stove cooking pancakes for a worried family he transubstantiates into those conservative relatives we have difficulty reconciling in memory in a world where the right is more frequently associated with cruelty for its own sake. There are grandmothers, uncles and cousins we can’t imagine leering at us with twisted, cruel smiles asking us if we’re triggered.

But throughout the film the Warrens and especially Ed act like the conservatives we are willing to romanticize. Ed is openly resistant to following his doctor’s orders regarding veggies, fish and egg whites but he’s never mean about it. He gathers all the men in the garage but it’s not to look at guns or tell racist jokes. It’s to play fucking ping pong. His prospective son-in-law who followed the tradition of asking parents before daughter is gently chided by Ed about no longer being a cop but when Tony explains why Ed accepts it.

For liberals and leftists this unlocks a fantasy of being parented in a terrifying and complex world. ICE renditioning people off the streets? Groceries unaffordable? Maybe Patrick Wilson will hug me, make me breakfast and solve my problems for me. For conservatives these films are aspirational identity. They’ve lost relationships and had relationships change shape in the last decade as they stand by their values but this fictional version of the Warrens never traded in their traditional values and are more loved than ever. I want Ed to be dad. They want to be Ed because he’s loved. Fascinating series and the fourth is a return form. Maybe the Dirty Harry of our times.