The Conjuring Comes to Netflix on October 13 — As a Game You Play With Your Phone

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2026

In three days, the highest-grossing horror franchise in history becomes a video game you play with your phone. THE CONJURING: UNSPOKEN launches exclusively on Netflix on October 13, and it might be the strangest, most interesting swing Netflix Games has taken yet: a full interactive horror experience from Supermassive Games — the studio behind Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology, and The Quarry — built with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, running in the cloud, with no console and no download required.

Here’s how it works. You open it on a supported TV or in a web browser, and your smartphone becomes the controller. But not just the controller — your phone doubles as the paranormal investigation equipment itself. The EMF reader that spikes when something is standing behind you? That’s your phone. The infrared camera sweeping a dark hallway? Your phone. The spirit box crackling with half-heard voices? Your phone. The first trailer, which dropped October 6/7 on Netflix Games’ YouTube channel, sells the fantasy hard: you’re not watching a ghost hunt, you’re holding the gear.

It’s a genuinely clever bit of design. Supermassive’s whole brand is cinematic choice-driven horror — quick-time events, branching deaths, the works. Stripping the controller out of the equation and replacing it with the one device every player already has in their hand isn’t just a cost decision; it changes the relationship between you and the screen. When the EMF reader goes off, it’s going off in your hand. That’s a different kind of jump scare than a rumble motor in a gamepad.

The storyA failed séance, a demonologist, and two new nightmares

The setup is pure Conjuring. A grieving Cooper family holes up at the centuries-old Red Lion Inn, a failed séance cracks something open, and demonologist Francesca Noakes gets pulled into the wreckage. You play as Noakes — which, for the Supermassive faithful, is the good kind of familiar: a single protagonist dropped into an escalating supernatural disaster, making the choices that decide who walks out.

The game introduces two new entities: Vinea, a demon that feeds on grief, and Florrie, a ghost. Vinea is the one that caught my eye — a demon that eats grief, set loose on a grieving family, in a story about a failed séance meant to contact the dead. That’s not just a monster; that’s a theme with teeth. Alongside the newcomers, familiar faces from the films will appear — and if you’ve never seen a single Conjuring movie, the game is built to work anyway. No homework required.

That accessibility matters, because the potential audience here is enormous. The Conjuring Universe is the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time at over $2.7 billion. The Conjuring: Last Rites alone earned $499 million on a $55 million budget. There’s an HBO Max TV show in development with showrunner Nancy Won. This isn’t a licensed game for a fading property — it’s a new chapter for a franchise at the absolute peak of its commercial power, landing three days before Halloween season hits full swing. The calendar placement is not subtle, and it’s not wrong.

The awkward partA Netflix game from Warner Bros. — one week after Paramount bought the studio

Now for the part of this story that made me do a double take. Unspoken is a Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment game, launching on Netflix. The trailer dropped on October 6 — the same day Warner Bros. Discovery was officially acquired by Paramount Skydance. And Netflix? Netflix bid for Warner Bros. earlier this year and walked away in February rather than match Paramount’s higher offer.

So: Netflix lost the bidding war for the whole studio — and a week after the winner took possession, Netflix is shipping a brand-new game built on one of WB’s crown-jewel franchises, developed by the Until Dawn studio, as a platform exclusive. Deals signed before an acquisition survive the acquisition, of course. But the optics are delicious. Netflix couldn’t buy Warner Bros., so it’ll just borrow the Conjuring instead.

There’s a human wrinkle here too. Supermassive Games just laid off 70 staff — we covered it earlier this month — less than six months after shipping Directive 8020. The studio that built Unspoken is the same studio that just cut a significant chunk of its workforce. Horror games about grief, made by a studio going through its own rough patch, launching three days from now. I’m not going to over-read it — but the timing lands with a thud.

The fine printSeventeen countries, cloud-only, and Netflix’s bigger bet

Before you get too excited: Unspoken is launching in only 17 countries — Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. If you’re outside that list, you’re waiting. Netflix has been methodical about rolling out its cloud gaming tests market by market, and this looks like another controlled expansion rather than a global blast.

Zoom out and the strategy comes into focus. Netflix Games already has 120+ mobile games in its catalog — Dead Cells, Red Dead Redemption, and plenty more. The mobile play was phase one: games as a retention feature for subscribers. Cloud play on the TV, controlled by the phone you’re already holding, is phase two — and a Supermassive horror game is a hell of a way to announce it. Nobody ever accused Netflix of thinking small; they just usually think small about games. This doesn’t feel small.

The real test, as always with Supermassive, is whether the choices matter and the scares land. The studio’s track record says the scares will land — Until Dawn remains the gold standard for this exact formula, and The Quarry proved they can still do it. The new variable is the format: a TV screen, a phone in your hand, and a demon that feeds on grief. On October 13, we find out if the future of horror games fits in your pocket. Browse our horror picks if you need something to watch while you wait.