What can possibly be done in a supernatural possession film that hasn’t already been? From demonic children speaking in guttural voices to athletic bodily contortions to spectral GI apparitions to ghost hunting in other dimensions, we’ve seen it all, and many times. There is nothing inherently wrong with such familiarity, however, because what’s old can be new again, and scary again, in the hands of a skilled director.
One of the best contemporary examples of such a revival was James Wan’s supremely scary 2013 haunted house hit The Conjuring, a hair-raising supernatural scare picture with elegance, polish and skillfully built horror sequences. Wan, a lifelong horror fan and savvy genre filmmaker, knows his stuff, and with reverence. The result was a ghost story of terrific tension.
But those days are long over, because The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, the third entry in the series (because everything needs multiple installments these days) is a minor, tepid affair that doesn’t so much prove the existence of evil as a driver for crime (which it thinks it’s doing) as much as demonstrate that bad movies about evil can possess good actors like Vera Farming and Patrick Wilson (in a third go-round as “real life” paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren) to appear in hokum beneath their talents.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which posits the Warren’s demon-fighting duo as superheroes of the spirit realm, is a both a bore and a chore, offering little genuine suspense and certainly nothing new on the demonic front. There isn’t a moment here approaching the original’s nods to classic thrillers and fine sense of malevolence. Instead, we get a darkly lit, routine, ho-hum mystery.
When we first met the Warrens they were investigating a heartland haunting circa 1971, and in the franchise’s not scary second picture, The Conjuring 2 (2016) they found themselves assisting a similarly beleaguered London clan in 1976. This time, it’s 1981 (The Curse of La Llorona director Michael Chaves does little with the era) and the picture opens on a surprisingly effective exorcism mounted with viscous gusto. The novelty of the Warrens may have lost a bit of shine this time out, but the movie at least gives them a fun opening with the requisite pyrotechnics and spirit-babble mumbo jumbo.
The possessed subject in the opener is an adolescent named David (Julian Hilliard)—yes, another child, and yes, a voice (among other things) appropriated from The Exorcist (or maybe Evil Dead; take your pick), and yes, a body twisted like a pretzel, to the horror of everyone onscreen (and to be fair, to us). And like that 1973 classic, there’s another case of a spirt being commanded to “get out” before transferring from one host to another, in this case the boyfriend, Arne (Ruairi O’Connor), of the possessed boy’s sister. While the demon causes Ed to have a heart attack, the exorcism appears successful. The case seems closed, but the Warrens are uncertain about the entity’s true origin and whereabouts.
Soon the demon consumes Arnie, clear to us by the overuse of gaunt, hollowed-out makeup. On a hot summer afternoon, Arnie and girlfriend Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook) are subjected to their obnoxious landlord’s blasting stereo (criminally appropriating the Blondie classic Call Me) which sends Arnie into a fit of ghostly visions followed by murder. Apparently, the other side has little love for Giorgio Moroder.
Arnie’s imprisonment means the Warrens are called back into action, primarily to prove that the devil, not Arne, was responsible for the crime, thereby sparing him life in prison or worse. If you look into the “real life” case file you’ll discover that there was actually a trial Connecticut where Ed and Lorraine testified. If the Warrens say it happened and it is in the public record, fine. Sure.
New director Chaves has delivered a downbeat, often quiet, dark-hued film with a look that does not suggest early 80s; rather, the gloom and murkiness are unappealing to the eye. Color palette aside, the element of fun is what is missing here, along with any real scares. There are moments where Chaves attempts to ratchet up tension including that opener, a rat-infested crawlspace and a woodland sequence where Lorraine steps into a parallel dimension to revisit a heinous crime scene. But Chaves isn’t quite a showman, and this material demands set-pieces, style and energy. Instead, he keeps things low-key, quiet and plodding.
This gives admittedly terrific actors Farmiga and Wilson opportunities to grow their characters, with mixed results. Wilson is stoic, saddled with the less interesting half of the pair. And Farmiga, with piercing commitment, is fearless. Too bad the film doesn’t match her.
2 stars.
