As much as I love this franchise, it’s best years may be behind it.
Recently I watched the latest installment of the Conjuring Franchise, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. This movie is the third film in the Conjuring trilogy, and the eighth in Conjuring Universe. Just like the previous two Conjuring films, this story is loosely based off the cases of paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). This movie is based on the trial of Arne Johnson, a murder that took place in Connecticut in 1981. The movie stars Wilson and Farmiga as well as Ruairi O’Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook, Julian Hilliard, and John Noble.
I just want to preface this review by saying that these are some of my favorite horror movies of the last decade. I realize that I love horror movies, but not all of them and the Conjuring movies fit right into that specific niche of horror movies that I do love. Out of the eight movies in the franchise, four of them are pretty good, but the three that are bad, like no good at all (I actually haven’t seen The Curse of La Llorona but I am aware of the negative responses to that film. Also you might read that sentence and notice that those numbers add up to seven, that’s because the jury is still out on The Devil Made Me Do It). My personal favorite is probably Annabelle: Creation, that one is genuinely terrifying. I can talk about Creation all day but I’m talking about The Devil Made Me Do It today.
To start it off, this movie is considerably shorter than The Conjuring 2 and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The first Conjuring and The Devil Made Me Do It both run at 112 minutes and The Conjuring 2 runs at 134 minutes. For this movie, the short runtime comes at a detriment as it feels kind of rushed. As already mentioned the story revolves around the trial of Arne Johnson, who was charged with murder after stabbing his landlord 22 times. I don’t know why but I thought that the movie would revolve around the trial itself, especially after finding out that this trial was the first American murder trial to claim demonic possession as a defense. I for some reason was expecting most of the movie to happen in a courtroom and I wasn’t disappointed when that didn’t happen but I was confused at the shifting of focus from Arne’s case to the solving of another case. Although that second case was used as a stepping stone for Arne’s case, it was still a weird detour nonetheless.
The scares in this installment are considerably weaker in terms of the trilogy. It somehow isn’t the weakest in the entire franchise (that would be The Nun) but it’s far from being the best. There wasn’t one moment in this movie in which I felt terror or felt like I should be scared. I don’t know if it was because I was watching the movie in my living room and not a theater but I did not feel scared once during this movie. Although I believe the series is known for its scares, the better movies in the franchise don’t rely on cliche horror movie jumpscares. This one didn’t even really have jumpscares and that was kinda disappointing. The first two Conjuring movies also had the advantage of having a scary location to go along with the story. I think this one not being a haunted house story really takes away from overall scares of the movie. Part of the appeal of the first two movies were the fact that the hauntings were taking place in decrepit locations that only paranormal investigators and crazy people would visit. The house from The Conjuring? Scary as hell. London in The Conjuring 2? Even scarier than the house from The Conjuring. The Devil Made Me Do It not being a haunted house movie definitely limits its scare factor.
As for the acting, Wilson and Farmiga once again are the MVPs. I love the two of them together so much it’s not even funny. I could go on about the two of them all day, and I probably will but I’ll talk about the supporting characters for now. Ruairi O’Connor plays Arne Johnson and does a really good job of looking like a very sick man, like all the time. I’ve always been fascinated by actors playing possessed characters in horror movies because of the amount of effort they put into contorting their body and faces (they probably aren’t the ones that do all that, it’s probably a professional contortionist, but still). Regardless the amount of effort put in is insane. Other standouts include Julian Hilliard who played David Glatzel, the boy that was originally possessed by the demon that latches on to Arne. He also falls into the same category that O’Connor does, he does a lot of contorting and weird face stuff that looks really cool (although most of it was probably CGI). Eugenie Bondurant gets the last shout out of the day for her role as the Occultist. While not as scary as Valek, Bathsheba, or even Annabelle’s Demon, she still looks scary. She also gets points for being a physical entity and not a straight up demon like in previous attempts, so that was something new.
The rest of the cast, however? Wildly forgettable. Sarah Catherine Hook plays Debbie Glatzel, Arne’s girlfriend and I could not tell her apart from Sterling Jerins, who plays Judy Warren (who makes her return after being sidelined for Mckenna Grace in Annabelle Comes Home) and Hook is actually in the movie for more than maybe 5 minutes unlike Jerins. Hook does her best but she ultimately gets lost in the sauce and doesn’t make any significant dent to the plot until the very end. Shannon Kook also makes his return as Drew Thomas, the Warrens assistant, after not really being featured in The Conjuring 2. The one thing of note that he did was rock a fire ass Nike jacket in the third act. Other than that, he’s just there, but it was cool to see him again.
I will briefly talk about Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga before I wrap up, because this is getting kinda long. Like I said before, I love the two of them together and no matter what movie they appear in, they always give 100% with their performances. I have a few gripes with their performances in this movie however. My first complaint is the fact that it felt like they didn’t spend a whole lot of time together on screen. They are together for most of the movie as expected but it felt like they didn’t interact with each other as much as they should. My second complaint is the fact that Patrick Wilson didn’t do an Elvis impersonation. I am aware that it is a trivial complaint but his impersonation is very good and it was featured in both The Conjuring 2 and Annabelle Comes Home so I am a little disappointed that it wasn’t featured in this one.
Overall, this movie is boring, point blank period. It suffers from a lack of scares and Wilson and Farmiga can only do so much with what they are given and it really shows. I really like this franchise and I hope that it can return to what it used to be. I trust James Wan (like a lot if you haven’t already noticed) to right the ship and take the franchise back to pre The Nun levels of good.
Above and Beyond the Screen 