The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
A chilling story of terror, murder and unknown evil that shocked even experienced real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. One of the most sensational cases from their files, it starts with a fight for the soul of a young boy, then takes them beyond anything they'd ever seen before, to mark the first time in U.S. history that a murder suspect would claim demonic possession as a defense.
LivewireAdmin reviewedSeptember 11, 2025
On first watch, I thought this was a decent but lesser entry—moody, a bit scattered, and not nearly as scary as Wan’s haunted-house high points. On rewatch, it played better than I expected. Knowing it pivots from a haunted-home siege to a road-movie investigation helped me meet it on its own terms, and the film’s strengths—especially the Ed & Lorraine dynamic—come through more clearly.
Michael Chaves steers the series into occult-thriller territory, and that shift is the movie’s secret sauce. The case-of-the-week framework—totems, a shadowy occultist, the Arne Johnson trial—gives Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga room to lean into the seasoned, tender partnership that anchors these films. Their scenes together carry a warmth and trust that makes the supernatural stakes feel personal; Ed’s vulnerability here adds a human wrinkle I underappreciated the first time.
Set-piece wise, it’s quietly stacked. The waterbed gag, the morgue sequence, and the rain-soaked cliff finale are all crisply staged, with Joseph Bishara’s score seething underneath like a low hum of dread. I also dug the period texture—those amber lamps and milky blues, the slightly waxy sheen of early-’80s interiors—plus the way the camera prowls rather than pounces. It’s less about jump scares and more about sustained unease.
The knocks are still the same, just less bothersome on revisit. The legal hook—“the devil made me do it”—feels underused; the courtroom angle is more marketing than narrative muscle. The occultist’s motivations read thin, and some CG-assisted moments can’t match the tactile nastiness of the franchise’s best practical frights. And while Chaves builds atmosphere, he doesn’t wring quite the same symphonic terror Wan did in 1 and 2.
Even so, the rewatch reframed it as a sturdy, character-driven chapter rather than a misfire. It’s a different flavor: an investigative romance with demons, not a carnival of set-pieces. When I tuned into that wavelength, I found a solid mid-tier Conjuring entry.
Worth a second look.
Letterboxd: FilmPhanPA