I’m genuinely surprised when I remember that I’ve seen both of the previous entries in The Conjuring franchise. Heck, I reviewed one of them, Hannah the other, and both times I think we each came away exceptionally nonplussed. While I’ve long moved past my struggles with turning the Warrens into pop culture icons, at this point they’re basically fictional constructs more than anything, the franchise just seems such a curious audience draw. Sure, James Wan can frame a nice shot, and its hard to argue with the magnetism of the leads, and I guess if you combine those two traits with some novel ghoul design, and that’s just enough of a recipe to overcome the films’ various script deficiencies. It’s basic pop horror, and given that we’ve been starved of a popular franchise in the genre for a long time, I can auger the appeal. Though I couldn’t even begin to tell you about the spinoffs.
With this third outing, subtitled somewhat hilariously, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It; we see Wan exit the director’s seat (evaporating one of those core elements) in favor of Michael Chaves, the director of one of those very same spinoffs I never saw, The Curse of La Llorona. To say Chaves is no Wan isn’t necessarily an insult, as at times I felt like the lauded architect of that franchise had difficulty getting out of his own way and his take on horror doesn’t necessarily jibe with my own. Then again, Chaves basically has all the panache of…someone who would direct a Conjuring spinoff.
What’s most disappointing about this next adventure of this demon exorcising duo is that if you just take the premise, and even the opening few sequences, you can see where The Devil Made Me Do It could provide a worthwhile about-face. Utilizing the real-life trial of Arne Johnson as its inciting subject matter, ol Ed and Lorraine (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, as usual) task themselves with proving that Johnson was actually possessed by a demon when he murdered his landlord. So far, not bad, and it brings up some decent memories of the underrated The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The idea of pitting their belief against the boundaries and logic of the law. Not the stuff of populist entertainment, but it feels like the makings of a real movie!
…and then they immediately convince the police of Lorraine’s magic powers and start visiting crime scenes with the detective in charge. Okay, getting stupider, but it could still work.
…and then Lorraine uses her powers to channel the memories of a dead girl in a morgue, there’s a possessed zombie body that keeps chasing Ed around, and then finally completing the fictional version of this couple’s real life transformation into comic book superheroes, they get an arch-nemesis.
With another studio, and another filmmaker, and another overall perspective, this could actually be a fun b-movie (and if you can’t be smart, going towards the fun side of stupid isn’t the worst choice in these pictures), but this is New Line and WB, so everything has to look the same muted way all their movies do with the same boring, somber tone. Wilson and Farmiga are always game for this kind of nonsense, the best pros are always are, but there’s only so much their shoulders can carry. The script just kind of gives up things like logic for much of its running (why is the bad lady doing the bad things? And why target this family specifically? Beats me!), all of the abovementioned invention that brought us their little rogues gallery like Annabelle and The Nun vanishes here for “generic possessed corpse” and “scary schoolmarm cult member”. But even that could work if you just had a filmmaker who foregrounded the scares, but Chaves instead is all about hiding things in the dark to the point where you can barely make out what’s happening, along with the worst kind of chaotic quick-cut editing.
In all, it’s a recipe for a different kind of throwback, The Conjuring by way of direct to video sequel. Given that this is debuting on HBO Max at the same time as theaters, will you even be able to tell the difference?
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