The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is a supernatural horror film directed by Michael Chaves. The screenplay was written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the happily married exorcists and ghost hunters. Ruiari O’Conner plays the young Arne Johnson who offered himself to a demon to save his fiancee’s kid brother. Apparently Arne Johnson was one of the first defendants to seriously offer demon possession as a legal defense for murder. John Noble and Sarah Catherine Hook are also included in the cast.
Ed and Lorraine are actual figures who apparently made a name for themselves in the world of the supernatural. The film starts off as they try to exorcise a demon from a young boy. Ed suffers a heart attack, but they believe ceremony to have gone reasonably well in spite of that. The demon takes over Arne who compels him to kiss his landlord; The Warrens figure out that someone else has summoned this creature and start an investigation into the past of the town. Anyway, the investigate an older murder with similar circumstances and discover the root of the hatred that would lead to the summoning of the demon.
Although this is not the worst movie of the horror genre, it a bit of a weak link in The Conjuring franchise. I still rather like the Warrens as characters, but the script still seemed to rely on too many familiar tropes in these possession storylines. The people possessed still shrieked and snarled and were able to contort their bodies in all sorts of impossible figures just like what has been seen in countless films of this sort. There was even a scene of a priest in a hat staring at the afflicted house that was lifted directly from The Exorcist. The performances were solid enough though, but the film suffers from a lack of originality. Once again, this is another cinematic offering that fails to stand out in either direction.
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