Review of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) by Cdougall — 13 Aug 2021

I’ve seen the movie that Michael Chaves directed before this, The Curse of La Llorona, which was his feature film debut. The Devil Made Me Do It is a big step up for Chaves from La Llorona and is a much better film; unfortunately, it’s also a big step down from the two Conjuring films that came before this one and is a disappointment in a lot of ways.

The writing is really where this movie falters for me, because the story and directing actually aren’t that bad. The dialogue is decent, but the script overall is filled with missed opportunities that could’ve made this movie the best one so far in the Conjuring franchise.

In other words, I don’t think that Chaves is entirely to blame for the quality of this film and I think he did the best he could with what he was given. This isn’t to say that the directing is perfect; there are disruptive moments and scenes that could’ve been improved, but overall Chaves did a pretty good job with what he had available to him.

TDMMDI is about a man who murders his landlord and claimed that a demon/supernatural presence made him do it, and the film centers around Ed and Lorraine Warren attempting to clear his name. At its core, this is a pretty interesting concept and one that I’m glad the filmmakers decided to explore.

However, the way this concept was written out on paper was very problematic. I came into this movie expecting to see a lot of scenes in a courtroom where the Warrens are doing everything possible to prevent Arne, the man in question, from spending decades in jail for a crime he was “forced” to commit against his will.

Being that this movie is based on a true story like the first two Conjuring movies, I put the word forced in quotations because we’ll never truly know what happened when Arne killed his landlord. That said, I don’t even think this movie spent more than a minute or two of its total runtime in the courtroom, which for me is a huge mistake.

TDMMDI could’ve and probably should’ve been a movie about how you would go about proving that someone committed a crime due to demonic possession in a courtroom and could’ve also had some intriguing insights regarding murderers in the real world, even if those insights were founded in the supernatural.

Having scenes with evidence and questioning and cross-examination would’ve been really interesting and cool to watch and would’ve been a unique and fresh direction for the Conjuring franchise. Unfortunately, TDMMDI goes way off the rails from this and takes a totally different approach that for me doesn’t work.

Another issue with this movie is that it just isn’t that scary. The horror in this movie is a big step down from the previous two movies. There were a few moments where my heart raced for a second or a I jumped a little in my seat, but not enough to justify this being a Conjuring movie.

The first two were terrifying, and because this one wasn’t it felt really boring at times and like a drag; this is something I do blame Chaves for because he did have control over how the scenes looked in the final product and he could’ve upped the ante on the horror.

But, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga were the highlights of this movie and what made it watchable for me. They give great performances yet again as the Warrens and really carry this film from start to finish, and Chaves does a nice job of capitalizing on their chemistry and even giving us a look into their past.

Wilson and Farmiga are great actors and I hope to see them again in the Conjuring universe.