Mark Reviews Movies: THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 3, 2021

The skepticism that was raised in both The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 would seem even more important in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, the third direct installment in this series (as well as the eighth in the larger franchise, because even supernatural horror movies, apparently, are required to be part of some "cinematic universe" now). Here, a man accused of murder insists that he only committed the crime under the influence of a demon that had taken over his consciousness.

His attorney's statement, "My client pleads not guilty, by reason of demonic possession," would probably be laughed out of a courtroom. As a counterpoint, the rationale of the career demonologist on the case is a little sound—at least in terms of this series. After all, the court already acknowledges the existence of God whenever someone swears on a Bible. "Maybe it's time they acknowledge the existence of the Devil," says Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), who, with his clairvoyant wife Lorraine (Vera Farmiga), has seen such evil many times. For this case, the two are tasked to make, according to some early text, the "most sinister discovery" in the couple's career.

That's a pretty big promise in a movie that comes after its predecessors—two very good films, which gave us some consistently frightening supernatural occurrences and creepy entities. This movie, written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and directed by Michael Chaves (who takes over from the series' regular helmer James Wan, after the relative newcomer oversaw franchise entry The Curse of La Llorona), is as straightforward as the first two films, although in a very different way.

While the previous installments were basically haunted house stories (fairly exceptional ones, of course), Johnson-McGoldrick has written something of a detective story. There was a murder, and Ed and Lorraine have to find the clues, follow the trail, and finally confront the person who was responsible for the killing.

Unlike the previous entries, though, there's absolutely no room for skepticism or doubt in this particular tale, which is both odd and disappointing, considering the setup of an actual trial, in which the Warrens' beliefs and findings would have to be put to the test. The two, although true believers in supernatural evil and the occult and all those matters, always have paid lip service to the notion that most claims of demonic possessions or activity could be explained rationally. This time, though, they're fully invested in accepting the truth of the claim from Arne (Ruairi O'Connor), who insists he only killed his landlord/his girlfriend's boss because he was possessed by a demon.

In the big picture, these are relatively minor quibbles when it comes to the third installment in a series that has embraced supernatural evil as a fundamental truth of the universe. Within the context of this particular movie, though, the absence of any rational alternative to Arne's claim undermines the real potential of this story—testing the Warrens and their beliefs in a setting that demands cold facts and hard evidence—and sends it down an inevitable, predictable—if occasionally effective—path.

The basics of the plot, based on a "true story" from the real Warrens' case files, involve Arne, who is possessed by the demon that had been possessing the little brother of his girlfriend Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook). That prologue, as well as a few other scenes early in the story, displays that Chaves wisely has taken his editing and staging cues from the previous films (using long takes and silence to build up the tension, while employing simple but efficient misdirection to pay off the suspense).

The Warrens helped with the attempted exorcism of the boy, which resulted in Ed having a heart attack. When Arne kills someone while allegedly—or, as shown and accepted by the movie, definitely—under the influence of the same demon, the couple agrees to prove the young man's claim.

Ed and Lorraine, obviously, go looking into the initial possession, and that uncovers a strange totem in the crawlspace of the house where the boy was tormented by a demon. There's a straight line from there, to a retired priest (played by John Noble) whose collection of evil objects rivals the Warrens' own, to a pair of college-aged girls who disappeared in the woods, and to a master Satanist, whose clairvoyant abilities actually surpass Lorraine's.

There are some worthy sequences as this clear-cut and mostly predictable plot unfolds. An early scene involving a hole in a wall—and what may or may not be inside it—is a brief but unsettling bit of sleight-of-hand, and the murder itself, arriving at the climax of a series of deceptive perceptions, is appropriately chilling. Lorraine's trip into the past, in order to uncover what happened to the missing young women, is eerie and leads to a jump scare that's genuinely unexpected, and a visit to the morgue has the Warrens contending with lights on a timer and a revived occupant.

None of this, though, quite comes together—partly because the lack of skepticism turns the material into a shallow scare machine, but mostly because the routine plotting lets the air out of the atmosphere. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It doesn't live up to its predecessors or, more importantly, its own potential.

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