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Despite the great casting of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, the third Conjuring movie continues the franchise’s penchant for mediocrity. The Devil Made Me Do It opens with Wilson and Farmiga, as real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorrain Warren, helping to perform an exorcism on a young boy. The incident gives Ed a serious heart attack that weakens him for the rest of the movie, and gives the possessing demon a chance to move from one victim to its next — a young man named Arne (Ruairi O’Connor) who begs the evil spirit to take him instead of the boy. When the demon forces Arne to commit murder, the Warrens take it upon themselves to save Arne from the death penalty by proving demonic possession is real in a court of law.
Just like the first Conjuring movie aped The Amityville Horror, this one apes The Exorcist. If you’ve never seen horror movies from the ’70s and ’80s, I can imagine how these Conjuring movies might be entertaining. But they’re simply not as good as the films that inspired them and they bring nothing new to the horror genre. The Devil Made Me Do It is salvaged only by Wilson and Farmiga, who have a cool, X-Files-like chemistry that makes these movies watchable. No one else in the film is remotely impactful, the tone and style are derivative, and the screenplay loses steam about halfway through. Maybe the ‘true’ story of this possession needed some embellishment, or maybe they just need to stop making Conjuring movies.
Directed by Michael Chaves. With John Noble and Sarah Catherine Hook.