The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Review

Somewhere during the latest "The Conjuring" movie, subtitled "The Devil Made Me Do It," I realized a pattern: the only time something jumped into view of the camera was when someone was somewhere they shouldn't be, like in a bedroom by themselves or when mopping the jail floor. You hear the music stops, and characters look around, telling us the audience to hold onto your bucket of popcorn so you don't spill it in fright. 

Once you identify this pattern, you can never really be scared. This hold true for a lot of horror flicks, but the best ones play you like an instrument, your heartrate going up and down; whether or not there is any "scare" is A) subjective and B) never really the point, it is all about sucking you into the world created by the movie. Alas, this is not one of those movies.

Instead, "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It" is two hours of things that go "boo" a lot, and it's a shame. An adaptation of the Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, something I'd never heard of until now, we follow Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively), who are helping with an exorcism of young David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), when the demon leaves the kid's body and sets up shop in Arne, who invited the evil in to save the little boy. Only Ed witnesses what happened, but suffers a major heart attack, giving the now possessed Arne time to kill his and his girlfriend (Sarah Catherine Hook)'s landlord.

The husband and wife team persuade Arne's attorney to plead, ah hem, "the devil made him do it," but need to figure out the why, what, and how of the prosecuted's possessed problem. This leads to a series of stereotypical spooky locations like basements and forests where creepy artifacts cause our leads to gasp at the camera.

I won't spoil the rest of the narrative, because I imagine that fans of this successful franchise live for the "surprise." Only it isn't very surprising, and certainly isn't very scary. But who am I? I am someone looking for a movie to take my breath away with relentless thrills and to haunt me with something more than the sight of men of the cloth shouting the bible at contorting bodies.

I suspect the problem with me even reviewing this is it's optional home release; available in theaters and on HBO Max, I chose the latter. My viewing area can never be as dark as at the cinemas, and without a packed crowd to holler in terror, it removes something vital from it. Alas I can only critique the version I watched, and that's not fair for this latest "Conjuring" entry.