The beauty writer Jessica DeFino refers often to the "mirror world" inside our phone, the uncanny, glistening selfieverse that's also become more real for many of its devotees than the lumpy, blotchy meatspace where the rest of us live. I thought about the mirror world while watching All's Fair, Ryan Murphy's new creative product-I can't call it a television show, because it isn't one.
The Conjuringfranchise offered the perfect marriage between the hottest horror trend (the "based on a true story" claim) and the hottest Hollywood trend (the massive cinematic universe). While the main Conjuring movies starred Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life paranormal investigators/frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren, spinoffs like Annabelle and The Nun flashed back to the origin stories of the creepy totems they encountered.