Film Review: ‘The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It’ is Haunted By Its Past

CHICAGO – The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is our third official, not-counting-the-spinoffs foray into the “based on true events” shenanigans of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and it’s starting to show. If you’re a tea drinker and equally as frugal as I am, you have reused a tea bag to make a second (sometimes even a third) cup of tea.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

The first cup will always be the strongest with the second cup still having a potent flavor, you just have to let it steep longer than the first cup. Everyone knows that by the time you get to making a third cup out of the same tea bag, the flavor infused in the water is a pale ghost of what it once was, tasting like a flat La Croix. The name of this watered-down flavor is called The Conjuring 3, but once you taste it you’ll immediately think of how much better it used to be.

As we rejoin the lives of the Warren family, we find them doing another exorcism, per usual. As always, something goes horribly wrong and we find our heroes fighting an entity they don’t completely understand, and give us a story too convoluted to care about. At this point, we know that the cases portrayed in these films are loosely based on real events and people. Think of it like a game of 2 Truths and a Lie, except switch the proportions of truths to lies, and even then the “truths” that are left are more fiction than fact. The entire setup, and even namesake, of The Conjuring 3 comes from the case that arguably put the Warrens in the mainstream, and that’s the trial of Arne Johnson. Will the help of the Warrens, Arne plead not guilty to a murder he committed, citing that he was not in control. He went as far as to tell the courts that the devil made him do it. I’m not going to argue the legal validity of using a claim like that, but even if it was marginally successful, it couldn’t be used by anyone ever again; you know, much like the story of the virgin Mary.

Click here for Jon Espino’s full review of “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” [21]

Photo credit: Warner Bros

Click here for Jon Espino’s full review of “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” [21]