There’s a permeating sense throughout The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It that the stalwart horror franchise has come to a fork in the road. After two movies which mined the haunted house setup to great effect, the series could’ve played it safe and sent the Warrens to another spooky home to battle an entity plaguing an unsuspecting family. Instead, director Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona) reframes Ed and Lorraine Warren as paranormal detectives as they try to prove a murderer was not acting of his own volition at the time of his crime. It’s admirable to see this latest Conjuring movie taking narrative risks -- most of which will assuredly pay dividends in future installments -- but on its own merits, The Devil Made Me Do It is a mixed bag that doesn’t quite balance its interesting central mystery with the scares followers of the franchise have come to expect.
The opening sequence, the exorcism of David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), serves as a sort of tonal handoff and feels like it could’ve been the end of an alternate-universe version of the third Conjuring movie. Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) have endeared themselves to the ailing Glatzels and, after an intense demonic assault featuring some great body horror, seemingly succeed in casting the entity out of young David. But saving David’s soul comes at a cost: not only does Ed suffer a massive heart attack, the demon takes hold of Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor), the boyfriend of David’s sister Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook). The demon’s influence over Arne is swift and deadly. In a fit of harried psychosis, Arne murders he and Debbie’s landlord, Bruno Sauls. Realizing that the crime was fallout from David’s exorcism, Ed and Lorraine encourage Arne to plead guilty by reason of demonic possession and set about finding evidence to confirm it.
The Conjuring franchise has always been marketed on its “based on true events” credentials, but The Devil Made Me Do It falters out of the gate in how it tries to service both the drama and the facts of Arne’s murder. Many of The Conjuring series’ strongest horror beats -- and indeed, some of this film’s as well -- happen when characters experience demonic activity in total isolation, forcing the viewer to question whether the demon is actually having an effect on the real world or if it’s in the character’s mind. The buildup to the murder is marred by cutaways to the perspective of Debbie and Bruno’s experience of the possessed Arne, making plain that, possessed or not, the man is not in his right mind. We already know Arne’s not a murderer by nature, so if the film had committed to limiting the crime to one character’s perspective, it may have been more impactful. It feels like a huge miscalculation, especially when Chaves actually nails this dynamic later on in another scene of a character detaching from reality and experiencing something different than what’s actually happening.
There’s also an uncomfortable choice made to paint Bruno as a volatile drunk. While this may be in keeping with the accounts of the real Johnson and Glatzels, here it feels as if the audience is asked to absolve Arne from the murder, possessed or not, because Bruno had it coming. It’s an odd move for a franchise that’s never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Taken with Arne’s limited displays of remorse for killing Bruno as the film goes on, and it becomes hard to emotionally attach to his plight in the same way it was for a loving mother in the first Conjuring or a working-class girl in the second. Chaves often cuts away to Arne and his continuing struggles against the demon terrorizing him, but most of these beats feel hampered both by our empathy for the character and the restricted avenues for horror that the prison setting allows. These telegraphed scares and over-engineered misdirects, which are a problem throughout The Devil Made Me Do It, feel endemic of The Conjuringverse going through growing pains as it closes in on a decade on screen.
While this film may be the least scary of the mainline series, it does make some strides in how it opens the franchise up to stories of greater scope. Even though you may end up caring more about the Warrens’ success than Arne’s absolution, The Devil Made Me Do It’s central investigation plot is engaging and sets it apart from other films in the Conjuringverse. As the Warrens discover Arne’s demon may not be on our spiritual plane of its own accord, they’re faced with an enemy who, in many ways, is more threatening than any they’ve faced before. The Occultist (Eugenie Bondurant) is a nihilistic, off-putting foe with powers that rival Lorraine’s. While Lorraine’s abilities are usually used passively, The Occultist weaponizes her power in ways that put the Warrens into real peril. The ongoing game of psychic cat and mouse Lorraine and The Occultist engage in provides The Devil Made Me Do It with dangerous energy, especially during one attack that hits especially close to home for the Warrens.
Bondurant cuts an imposing figure throughout, and her appearances always portend especially harrowing challenges for Ed and Lorraine, whose enduring love for each other is exploited as both their greatest weakness and their only defense. Whether or not The Occultist has a future in the franchise, she’s certainly one of the strongest elements of The Devil Made Me Do It and leaves a lasting impression. The always-reliable John Noble (Fringe, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King) likewise delivers some dark gravity as Father Kastner. Kastner’s a retired priest who assists the Warrens in their hunt for The Occultist and makes the most out of his relatively short appearance. He does make a couple of head-scratching omissions that feel more in service of keeping the Warrens’ in the dark long enough to move them into place for the climax, but overall, Kastner’s contributions feel substantial.
At this point, it’s no secret that the chemistry between Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s Ed and Lorraine is one of The Conjuringverse’s secret weapons. Wilson and Farmiga are as watchable as ever here, but The Devil Made Me Do It rests on its laurels in furthering our understanding of them as a couple, and doesn’t do much more for them individually. Ed does have to grapple with the limitations his weakened heart puts on him, but Chaves implies most of this internal struggle with Ed’s labored breathing and frequent falling behind, rather than use it as fodder for conflict between he and Lorraine as they face more and more danger. Farmiga really gets to swing for the fences in her battles with The Occultist, but The Devil Made Me Do It doesn’t give us much insight into how she’s affected by them. Ed and Lorraine’s relationship is most effective in this film’s quieter moments, and glossy romantic cutaways to their first meeting don’t approach the understated sweetness of Lorraine remembering something Ed’s forgotten in a key moment late in the story.
While it may not be especially frightening, The Devil Made Me Do It is certainly the best looking Conjuring film. The freedom that the Warrens’ wide-ranging (well, New England-spanning) investigation allows for gives Chaves ample opportunity for technical setups that the first two films didn’t have room for. Lorraine’s Batman-style “investigation mode” reconstruction of a girl’s disappearance allows for some great in-camera day-to-night shifts and The Occultist’s dark influence blurs the line between reality and illusion with some great funhouse trickery. Chaves has a keen eye for visuals and even in scenes where you can see the scare coming from a mile away, at least every setting’s ominous atmosphere is thought out and shot with flair.