The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The Conjuring is an interesting series. The spin offs range from ok to dull with The Curse of La Llarona being one of the worst (equal to The Nun) and yet the third Conjuring film (or eighth in the Conjuring universe) is directed by the guy who directed one of the dullest horror films of recent years. The scroll at the beginning says that the film was based on a true story. I would say the more accurate is ‘loosely based on a true story’ because the actual true story is that Arne Cheyenne Johnson killed his landlord but it became the first case in the US where the defendant denied responsibility on the grounds of being possessed by a demon at the time. 

The central performances from Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are solid and have perhaps been the best thing of the Conjuring movies. Farmiga has to do the majority of the work here and she does really well with it. The supporting performances are all good with Ruairi O’Connor (Arne) and Sarah Catherine Hook (Debbie Glatzel) doing enough to stand out. It was a surprise to see John Noble pop up for a role where he was clearly up to something.

The second half of the film remembers that it's a Conjuring film and so does the things that you would expect from that type of film and it was this half that I found more interesting. It felt more like what I would expect from a Conjuring film. By that I mean that the suspension of disbelief gets stretched to breaking point. It comes after Lorraine discovers a body that had been missing for months. I did find myself asking a question of how it managed to stay undetected after the police would have done a big search in that area. They did manage to get round that with a plausible line but the body itself didn't look like it had been in the water for a few months. Bodies normally get bloated after prolonged time in the water yet in the film it looked a bit rotted but that was it. Things continue the credibility stretch but you dont watch the Conjuring films for the gritty realism.

This is a better film than La Llarona but that was never going to be difficult to achieve. It’s not the best of the Conjuring films either but I do give it points for at least attempting to do something different. I think if James Wan had been directing this then there might have been a bit more energy to it. The film didn't rely on jump scares as much as I was expecting which was perhaps the biggest surprise but this cost.