THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT
THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT I The expansive horror franchise returns with a boundary-pushing next chapter.
Part 3 of the horror series (well, 3.5 if you count Annabelle Comes Home).
We wanted to blow the doors off the haunted house. Up until now, these movies have existed inside a certain type of framework,” director Michael Chaves tells Teasers, recalling early conversations he had with The Conjuring Universe’s creator and former captain James Wan, while they worked together on the saga’s seventh entry, The Curse Of La Llorona. “We were desperate to take them beyond that,” he says.
“[David Fincher’s] Se7en is one of our favourites and we were excited by the challenge of doing something along those lines – something surrounding an investigation – within the series, while still using all that supernatural terminology and language.”
Like its predecessors, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It takes inspiration from the case files of the Warrens, reallife paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine, portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. It opens in 1981, at the dawn of the Satanic Panic period in the US, with the pair of them being called upon to witness the Vatican-approved exorcism of eight-year-old David Glatzel – the “harrowing” actual recording of which can be heard over the end credits.
The ritual winds up going “horribly wrong” and, according to those present, leads to the demonic possession of fellow attendee Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor), who kills his landlord just a few months later. Upon his arrest, Arne and his defence lawyer argue that it was the evil entity within him that prompted such violence, sparking a controversial trial and subsequent media storm – with Ed and Lorraine’s reputations being called into question, alongside Arne’s self-proclaimed innocence.