Review: WB’s “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was one of the most anticipated horror films set to release this year. The Conjuring cinematic universe has been a big hit for the WB and fans were eager for another mainline entry. And while the film was earnest in intent and took some interesting chances with the established formula, it turned out to be rather anticlimactic and most fans will be left wanting by the end.
The issue here isn’t really the story, as it’s a unique one that is true to life, as it really is about the first time someone ever claimed demonic possession as a legal defense in the US. However, the creatives don’t delve into this much, and instead go all in on the mysticism of the situation. It feels like WB missed a chance to create a winding kind of legal drama that mixed in the best parts of their most prominent horror franchise. Instead, they went with a by the number plot that has all the beats you’d expect, but little of the punch you want.
The biggest issue here is that there is no character development of the afflicted family. A big part of what mad the first two entries successful is that they spent time introducing the audience to the families being haunted. As such, viewers had a chance to sympathize with the characters, so that when things when sideways, they cared. In this instance, though, spectators were brought into the action in the middle and the first thing they saw was Arne making the colossally idiotic (albeit heroic) decision to swap places with the kid getting exorcised, allowing the demon to enter him.
This had a twofold effect. First off, it eliminated any ounce of goodwill the character of Arne might have gotten. He was trying to do a good thing but did it in such a stupid way that it led to a worse outcome. And secondly, the movie then jumped headlong into solving the problem of his possession and the ramifications. There was very little time spent developing Arne and his family, or the toll this dilemma would take on them, and the small time that was devoted to that task fell flat.
That said, the threequel did establish an interesting premise that defied audience expectations and provided a different kind of Conjuring story. But there was so much focus on making the film different that the creative team lost sight of what fans connected with in the first place. And because of that the movie had to fall back on lazy writing tropes to try to artificially create stakes and suspense, rather than letting them bloom organically from a well-written story. And for their part, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are still game and give impressive performances that are reminiscent of what they’ve done thus far in the series. But they remain hamstrung by the lackluster script that quickly becomes hokey, regardless of how much force or emphasis they try to put behind the lame duck words.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It might have actually been considered a good flick, were it not for the original, which has to be considered a horror classic at this point, and its immediate follow-up, which wasn’t quite as good but was more than a worthy sequel. All things considered, The Devil Made Me Do It took some big swings, but none of them really connected and the guiding hand of James Wan is really missed. It should have been a moody, suspenseful shock fest, but the scares were barely at Casper-level and the whole thing seems like a wasted opportunity.
