Director: Michael Chaves
Notable Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ruairi O’Connor,
Sarah Catherine Hook, Julian Hilliard, John Noble, Eugenie Bondurant, Shannon
Kook, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Keith Arthur Bolden
With almost $2 billion dollars in the box office now, The
Conjuring Universe has solidified itself as one of the premiere horror
franchises in history. What started as Wan’s love letter to 70s supernatural
horror has become a lucrative money-making machine that has spawned far more
spin-offs than entries into the original series. The quality of these entries
varies, often to a shocking extent, but one thing about the series is that it
always finds a way to entertain - even if the whole product is flawed.
The latest entry into the series, The Conjuring: The
Devil Made Me Do It, is now the third of the original series and finally
catching up to its spin-off series, Annabelle, in quantity. This entry represents
a deviation from its two predecessors in a few ways, most notably in that James
Wan has stepped away from the director’s chair, but it’s not one that
completely abandons the core values for a slightly more convenient approach.
Certainly, The Devil Made Me Do It is not the efficient and tightly
crafted modern classic one might hope, but it’s also not the wild misfire it
might have been.
Replacing James Wan in the pilot’s seat for this entry is
Michael Chaves, notable for music videos and his “is this part of The
Conjuring Universe...or not?” film, The Curse of La Llorona. It’s
immediately evident that it’s a different director this time around. While
Chaves does an admirable job in recreating the Wan look and tone, the film
lacks that elevated sense of cohesion and finely tuned balance of fear and
heart that made the original two such effective pieces of horror cinema. Chaves
hardly fucks it up, particularly since Wan remains on as a producer and a
co-writer for the film, but the overall product just feels a few shades
thinner.
When Chaves is on top of it, he delivers some entertaining
horror. A Carrie-type shower sequence with a young boy being stalked by
an invisible force, the initial murder sequence in a dog boarding house that
kicks off the larger investigation, and a tornado inspired exorcism of the
opening are all fun and quirky sequences that showcase a bit of diversity in
tone, tension, and approach to horror in the film. It’s not quite the series of
iconic moments of subtlety that one might expect from the series, but it’s
still effective and fun.
The plotting, where the Warrens must investigate a demonic
possession of a young man that drives him to kill another man, is the biggest
deviance for the series. It attempts to follow the now traditional dual
narrative, focusing on the family and then the Warrens, but since the demonic
possession jumps characters and is puppeteered by an unknown force, a kind of
‘occultist’ that serves as the film’s villain, this film further leans into
being an investigative procedural. Quite frankly, the change is refreshing. It
ends up sacrificing a bit of the heartfelt connection for an audience to relate
to the unfortunate people burdened by demonic events, but change - even when
it’s not quite as effective - does not necessarily equate to bad and The
Devil Made Me Do It does an admirable job at delivering on it.
Once again, the true soul of The Conjuring universe
belongs to Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, portraying the loving fictional
version of the Warrens. While the film doesn’t quite find that moment of purity
like the Elvis song sequence from The Conjuring 2, it still anchors all
of the events on their relationship which continues to impress. Their
performances remain solid, even if their rotating secondary cast is more
fleeting this time around - including a strangely absent daughter character.
Their work in the film and their characters remain the beating heart of why
this series works so effectively.
All in all, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
is a solid addition to the franchise. Sure, it never reaches the heights of the
first two, not quite as bold even with its own newer approaches, but it’s still
an entertaining and foundationally solid film that will appease fans. The
performances work, the individual scare moments are fun - particularly in some
of the homages that Chaves throws down to classic horror films, and the overall
mystery is refreshing. It’s also a film with a far more muddled script, lacking
the nuance and balance of its predecessors, and it comes off as a bit cheesier
overall. In the entirety of The Conjuring Universe, The Devil Made Me
Do It is not upper echelon, but it’s also not the misfire that initial
reactions claimed it to be.
If anything, I hope it sets up a larger plot with its occult
elements (which tie directly to the origins of the Annabelle series) for
further sequels. If they can conjure that up, I’m willing to ride along.
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