The Devil Is in the Details

A couple of days ago, I wrote about The Conjuring 2 on my way to watching the newest installment in the franchise, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. The action advances from the 70s to 1981, but we are of course still following Ed and Lorraine Warren on another of their investigations, this one one involving a murder committed by someone while possessed by a demonic entity.

I've heard a pretty healthy split among horror movie fans about whether the first Conjuring movie or the second was better. But there's little doubt in my mind that all will regard this new one as the weakest. It's not "bad," in large part because the template for these movies is now pretty well established. But I think it falls short, mainly for the ways it does depart from that template.

The Devil Made Me Do It is really lacking the great "set piece" scares of the first two movies. There are scenes clearly intended to be that, but they just don't pack the punch of their predecessors. A new director, Michael Chaves, takes over, and is not nearly as clever as James Wan was about how to stage scenes and use the camera. There's no indelible figure like Annabelle of the first movie or the monstrous nun of the sequel to linger in your mind's eye long after the movie is over. There's great makeup work, the right touch of CG, and appropriate music, but it all just doesn't reach as high a mark as its predecessors.

In fact, I'd say the story is almost too grounded in realism. For a few minutes in the middle, it seems as though the movie is going to veer into full-on courtroom drama -- so much effort is devoted to establishing this as a legal matter that there seems to be a real danger that the supernatural trappings are going to fall away. And without giving away too much of the climax (I hope), this script feels like it goes unnecessarily far in justifying why this is all happening, to these people in particular. Too much real world drama underpins the supernatural hijinks you came for.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are back again, of course, and as good as ever at infusing mystical mumbo-jumbo with gravitas. But after the second movie gave a meaningful plot line to their characters, I feel something lacking in this third film, which turns the dial back much more toward making them observer/chroniclers.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is still certainly watchable if you're a fan of the horror genre. But I think those fans will inevitably feel it compares poorly to classics, and the prior Conjuring films. I give it a C+.