Rated R for terror, violence and some disturbing images.
Now Playing In Theaters and Streaming on HBO Max Until July 4 In 1981, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are in the middle of saving the soul of 8-year-old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) from a demon that has infiltrated his family’s home. While they are successful in getting the evil spirit out of the boy, it merely transfers itself into the body of their family friend Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor). With this new vessel, it manages to trick Arne into murdering his apartment landlord Bruno Sauls (Ronnie Gene Blevins). Arne is arrested, and with no other alternative, the Warrens convince his lawyer to use demonic possession as his defense in court. It obviously doesn’t go well, and they are forced to find a way to prove this. Now, they are on the hunt for the source behind this demonic activity, which leads them to discover that the demon may be under the influence of someone else. They must find and stop this person before their evil can spread any further. After the first two Conjuring films, my hopes were almost impossibly high for the long-awaited third installment in the main timeline of the Conjuring Universe. It’s been amazing getting a cinematic universe that doesn’t act like an over-bloated television series like the Marvel universe. And for it to focus on the case files of the Warrens, who I’ve been fans of since I was a kid, it felt like I finally had something I could latch onto. However, there were things that tempered my expectations going into The Devil Made Me Do It. The biggest one being the departing of original director James Wan. He really is the one who made the first two films as terrifying as they are, and turned them into the franchise we have today. But now that he’s making films for the DC Extended Universe, he opted to not direct this latest chapter. Not only that, but the person he handed the reigns to is Michael Chaves, the director of The Curse of La Llorona. While that movie does have a handful of clever scares and is, for the most part, a fun entry in the franchise, it certainly is one of the weaker films. Chaves can conjure a good scare, but doesn’t really have the same level of craft that Wan excels at. And as a result, The Devil Made Me Do It doesn’t live up to my high expectations. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a really good movie and smartly tries something new after two films that were basically the same haunted house premise done twice over. After this long, it seems a bit overdue for the franchise to try and reinvent itself, and to its credit, it mostly succeeds with this change up. Rather than a haunted house movie, this film is more a supernatural murder mystery, having the Warrens act like police investigators rather than simply demonologists. Screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick does a good job of crafting a mystery that keeps the audience on their toes with some clever plot twists. And as with the first two films, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are fantastic as Ed and Lorraine Warren. It’s their performances and chemistry that are really the heart and soul of the Conjuring Universe. Here, they continue to show off said chemistry as the scary situations ramp up. They really feel like a loving couple throughout, which gives us more than enough reasons to root for them as the danger grows. Unfortunately, the biggest issue with the film that keeps it from being great goes back the change in directors. Like The Curse of La Llorona, Michael Chaves crafts set pieces that give us a good jolts and occasionally get under out skin. But his scares never really linger as much as the iconic sequences that James Wan put together. There are also moments where points of the script feel underdeveloped. There are several subplots throughout that don’t really get the attention they need to feel necessary for the story as a whole. For instance, a subplot involving a heart attack that Ed sustains during the opening sequence that gravely affects his health doesn’t offer much outside of small stakes added to the narrative, but doesn’t really affect it in any substantial way. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It may not be on the same level as its predecessors, but despite that, it’s still a worthy entry into the ever expanding Conjuring Universe. It has a fair amount of fun jolts and scary moments, and the performances of Wilson and Farmiga hold the film up even in its weaker moments. Even if it doesn’t have the lingering dread of the previous films, it's still one of the stronger ones in the franchise.
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