The latest horror movie in the blockbuster Conjuring<\/em> universe acts as penance for the series\u2019 recent sins. The spinoff Annabelle Comes Home<\/em> (2019) only featured a few scenes with the husband and wife who are the soul of the series: Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Here Ed and Lorraine are the focus for the film\u2019s entirety, as it spends its two-hour runtime on a single story, based on a real-life case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1981, the Warrens participated in the exorcism of eight-year-old David Glatzel (the adorable, bespectacled Julian Hilliard of The Haunting of Hill House<\/em>). While their efforts initially appear successful \u2014 other than giving Ed a literal heart attack \u2014 they soon realize that the demon that possessed the boy isn\u2019t gone; it moved into the nearby body of David\u2019s sister\u2019s boyfriend, Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor). Shortly after, the formerly sweet Arne commits murder, shocking both his devoted girlfriend, Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook), and his entire small town. The Warrens are drawn back into the dark situation, as they help Arne to plead \u201cnot guilty by reason of demonic possession\u201d in his trial for murder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For a brief moment, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It<\/em> looks as though it will morph into a true crime\/horror hybrid, radically evolving its formula after so many previous films. However, writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and director Michael Chaves veer left, skimming over the legal proceedings and sticking with the devil they know. But they don\u2019t quite do what\u2019s expected either; Ed and Lorraine are somehow even more central \u2014 and even more in peril \u2014 than they\u2019ve been in earlier adventures, as they become the specific targets of the film\u2019s villain. Their enviable relationship (you know, other than always being surrounded by demons) has always brought real substance and emotion to the franchise, as well as the sense of how truly good these people are amidst all the evil they deal with. The audience actually cares about them, a rarity in the genre, thanks to years of character building and always solid performances from Wilson and Farmiga. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That emotional investment is what makes the goofy third act in this movie such a letdown. Chaves previously directed the stealth franchise entry \u2014 and dud \u2014 The Curse of la Llorona<\/em> in 2019, but he knows how to make the audience squirm with some icky sequences (my fear of crawlspaces has been validated) and unsettling visuals. However, once we arrive at the final scenes, there\u2019s little that truly terrifies \u2014 which is what I come to these films for, other than vintage tie-neck blouses and marriage inspiration. The climax gets a little silly, evoking more eye rolls than gasps. Meanwhile, Arne\u2019s plight feels more like an afterthought than what is theoretically driving the story forward. By its very nature, the evil at the heart of this movie should feel scarier than either The Conjuring<\/em>\u2019s Annabelle doll or The Conjuring 2<\/em>\u2019s demon nun Valak, but it never reaches the levels of primal fear its forerunners did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Quality-wise, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It<\/em> resides squarely in the middle of this eight-film universe, creeping past the spin-offs and sneaking up on the pair of movies at the center of the series. With its third-act stumbles, it never quite catches either The Conjuring<\/em> or The Conjuring 2<\/em>, but it proves there is still spirit left in this franchise. James Wan set the bar high, and even a film that misses those heights is still among the better studio horror offerings thanks to the grounding presence of Wilson and Farmiga and their beloved characters.\u00a0 The latest installment in the durable horror franchise is a mixed bag: solid performances from its leads, hampered by a fatally flawed home stretch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":594,"featured_media":16621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340],"tags":[1098],"class_list":["post-16619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22276,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16619\/revisions\/22276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/conjuring2-1024x682.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u00a0B-<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"