In the 1980s, the slasher was without a doubt the predominant type of horror film available to audiences.
Later, as the popularity of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers dwindled, the zombie genre overran the horror landscape with its hordes of reanimated corpses before taking a backseat to supernatural horror with the likes of Paranormal Activity and the Insidious series taking the lead with scaring audiences senseless.
Part of this new wave of paranormal horror was James Wan’s 2013 effort The Conjuring.
Taking its inspiration from the case files of real-life charlatans Ed and Lorraine Warren, the first film boasted a sincere sense of dread and solid scares, which were balanced out by a certain degree of groundedness thanks to Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson’s compelling performances as the impeccably coiffed psychic and her God-fearing husband.
Naturally, as is the standard for the horror genre in particular, a sequel was soon in the works, and James Wan returned to direct once again, as the sequel handled the case of the Enfield poltergeist in a manner that the real-life subjects of the incident were less than pleased about.
Still, the film was almost on par with its predecessor in terms of production value, atmosphere and intensity, and the so-called Conjuring Cinematic Universe was now in full swing with two main films and a continuous stream of spin-offs of decreasing quality making their way to theaters at steady intervals.
While The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is certainly better than the multiple spin-offs the horror series has spawned, it is undoubtedly the weakest of the three The Conjuring films.
As before, Farmiga and Wilson’s chemistry goes a long way to somewhat ground the story and allow the audience to invest in the protagonists, but the lack of James Wan’s undeniable flair does affect the end result, which is ultimately more Scooby-Doo than The Exorcist.
Whereas the two previous films about the exploits of the Warrens concerned supernatural occurrences that inspired great terror without loss of life, in the case of Arne Johnson’s supposed demonic possession, however, life was lost.
Much like the motives of the real-life Warrens have been called into question many times over the years, once a film takes the route of handling real-life murder within a horror movie setting – a genre that is by default exploitative – one must further scrutinize how the subject matter is handled, as it is all too easy to lose sight of the humanity of the real-life victim when their tragedy is used as a means to entertain rather than educate.
Due to the increased focus on mystery in this installment, the film is thankfully not as overtly exploitative as it could have been, but much like the rest of the series – and arguably the claims of the real-life Warrens themselves – it is of course a sensationalist exacerbation of actual events.
As such, there should then at least be good entertainment value to be found, but while the aforementioned shift in focus to mystery over outright horror works to some extent, the film simply lacks the finesse in writing and execution that made its predecessors so successful. The motivation of the antagonist is not established well enough, and the pay-off when all is revealed is missing the trademark atmosphere and intensity of the first two The Conjuring films, making The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It a forgettable affair.
While not unwatchable, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It nonetheless has a severely lessened sense of dread and tame scares compared to its predecessors, and while the whodunnit flavor of the third installment is not necessarily a negative turn, it may be time for the supernatural horror film to pass the popularity torch to another horror subgenre.
Verdict: 5 out of 10
* * * * *
Produced by James Wan, Peter Safran
Screenplay by David Leslie, Johnson-McGoldrick
Story by James Wan, David Leslie, Johnson-McGoldrick
Directed by Michael Chaves
Starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ruairi O’Connor,
Sarah Catherine Hook, Julian Hilliard
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
arrives in Theaters and HBO Max on June 4, 2021
