The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
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James Wan stepped down as director to let Michael Chaves (The Curse of la Llorona) take the helm on this third installment in The Conjuring trilogy (and supposed eighth in the Conjuring universe). The film was originally set to hit theaters back in September 2020, but the pandemic had other plans, pushing it (along with almost every other movie) to the following year.
Luckily, the long wait is finally over and fans of the universe finally get another addition to the original films that kicked things off, but sadly much of the creepiness, atmosphere, and charm that made the first two such strong films is a bit lost here.
While the first two movies primarily focused on possessions, this latest tale kinda gets that out of the way right from the beginning, as they exorcise a demon out of a young boy. Of course, these things are never that easy and the sister's boyfriend begins having visions, ultimately leading up to the death of an innocent by his hands. This steers us to the story and true case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, which is the “first known court case in the United States in which the defense sought to prove innocence based upon the defendant's claim of demonic possession.”
I don’t know much about the real case, but the movie has the Warrens face off against a powerful occultist rather than some kind of demon this time ‘round, which was a nice change of pace, but still wasn’t quite enough to make the movie stand out enough among the three. Whether it was the writing or simply because James Wan didn’t go behind the camera this time, much of what worked before either didn’t here or just wasn’t present enough to make an impact.
Despite all that, it’s still not a bad piece of cinema, in my opinion. It kept my interest for the most part and I liked how they at least tried something different with the main villain. While the weakest in the key trilogy, it's still nowhere near as bad as some of the spinoffs from the universe and there are a couple semi-creepy scenes here and there, but sadly nothing as strong as we got before.