The third time is not the charm.
Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) are back. Their latest exorcism goes horribly wrong. Ed ends up in the hospital after a heart attack. And if that’s bad enough, instead of being expelled, the demon merely jumps from David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) to Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor). The latter of whom goes on to murder his landlord. Then it’s up to the Warrens to retrace their steps and uncover evidence that will help Johnson’s case.
They eventually discover a mysterious artifact that curses people, which is how David got possessed in the first place. To learn more about where it came from, they’re directed towards Kastner, an ex-priest who spent years studying cults to understand their motives. Almost immediately, I began to wonder if the priest might have gone too far into the mind frame of cultists. Especially since he’s played by John Noble, who’s almost always a d**k. (spoiler) However, while Kastner did know more about what was going on than he initially let on, he does end up siding with the Warrens. (/spoiler)
By this point, the filmmakers probably assumed that the audience would be familiar with the franchise’s tricks, so they decided to change the formula to an extent. It’s much more a detective story where the Warrens need to trace the origins of the curse. Sadly, that’s not enough to save the movie. Besides that, why are they even still investigating demons and Satanists? Wasn’t this one going to be about a werewolf at one point, or was that only a rumor?
Another significant difference is that this one is much darker than the prior two installments. True, they weren’t all sunshine and rainbows, but they kept the graphic violence to a minimum. This one relies more heavily upon gross-out horror with its morgue of bloated corpses and shower water turning into blood. Now, is it disappointing to have the film resort to this after the prior films managed to be scary without it? Others might say yes, but I didn’t really mind.
The Devil Made Me Do It suffers from a much weaker script. The biggest sign that the creative juices are starting to run a little low is that this movie doesn’t have a single memorable antagonist. There is no Annabelle the Doll, Demon Nun (Bonnie Aarons), or Crooked Man (Javier Botet). The revelation of the main villain’s identity also marks a colossal missed opportunity.
(spoiler) Isla (Eugenie Bondurant), the occultist behind everything, ends up being Kastner’s daughter. You see, the whole thing with Kastner is that he’s a lot like the Warrens. A deeply religious person who has dedicated their whole life to studying the occult. He has this private museum of supernatural artifacts. They both even have daughters who they have tried to shield from their work. The difference is that Kastner has sadly failed to protect his offspring.
This could have led to a highly emotional subplot. The Warrens wondering if being surrounded by all this death and evil has negatively impacted their daughter Judy (Sterling Jerins). Instead, the plot twist concerning Isla the Occultist doesn’t hit as hard as it could have because Judy’s barely a character in these movies. The only time she gets any characterization is in Annabelle Come Home, where McKenna Grace plays her. (/spoiler)
What’s funny about the Warrens is that their role increases with each subsect film. In The Conjuring, there are almost supporting characters to the Perron family. In The Conjuring 2, an equal amount of focus is split between them and the Hodgson family. In The Devil Made Me Do It, it’s pretty much all them. Granted, Farmiga and Wilson are talented actors, so that’s not a problem.
All in all, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was a letdown. If you are a fan of this franchise, I’d say that you should watch it just because, because you’ve probably seen all the others, and you can only rewatch The Conjuring 1 & 2 so many times. If you’re not a fan, however, then I’d give this one a pass.
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