It is crazy to think that The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is the eighth movie in this franchise! I am a huge fan of pretty much every horror-related thing that James Wan has had his name attached to from this to Insidious, to Saw to Sinister. Like other tales from The Conjuring universe, The Devil Made Me Do It is actually based on a true story.
How to Stream or Download The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
To check if the movie is already available for stream or for download, click on the Download button located below this review.
The Movie Review
Michael Chaves was brought on as the director after the great job he did with The Curse of La Lorena. Series regularizes Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as Ed and Loraine Warren. The story is based around the true events of the trial of Arne Johnson where he claimed that he was possessed when he killed another man, it was the first time in US history that “possession” was used as a defense in court.
I do not think you need to know anything about the actual case to get into the movie. While it would certainly help if you have seen the other Conjuring movies, I think this does work well as a stand-alone story too. It has a real creepiness to it all and you cannot help, but think this time Ed and Loraine have well and truly met their match.
They are called in by the Glatzel family to help with their young son who has been possessed by a demon. Arne, a young man who is dating the child’s sister tries to help and tells the demon to take him instead. They all think the exorcism went off without a hitch, but things quickly go off the rails as the demon takes hold of Arne.
The opening act of the movie is just fantastic. I would argue that the opening act of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, is the best in the entire franchise actually! It really sets things up very well and the final act is also very, very good where you really do think this could be it for Ed or Loraine!
I do not want to go into too much detail here as it is spoiler territory. What I will say is that the antagonist of this movie is just fantastic. The thing is, I enjoyed this movie and thought that it was a great entry to the series. I jumped more than once, I felt legit danger for our main characters and as I said, the main villain was awesome.
The thing is, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is a movie that has such a strong 100 MPH opening act that it struggles to keep it going. I do feel it gets the momentum back towards the end of the movie, but it feels like the pace greatly slows down in the middle. This does not make it bad or anything, but you certainly feel it when you are watching it.
At the end of the day, the wife and I had a fun time watching this in the theatre. If you have enjoyed the other movies from The Conjuring and Annabelle series then I have no doubt you will enjoy this. It is a very interesting story and it actually made me want to learn more about the real events that inspired it.
