MOVIE REVIEW
“THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT”
Rated R. At AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay, Regal Fenway and suburban theaters and on HBO Max.
Grade: C
If “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” the third entry in “The Conjuring” films, sounds like a tacky title to you, you are not alone. This installment begins with happily married, 1980s demon-hunting, paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga), who are beginning to look like they belong in a commercial for a prescription laxative, battling a demon that has taken possession of 8-year-old David Glatzel (Jullian Hilliard). In a scuffle, little David stabs his father in the thigh with a shard of broken glass (kids) and his older sister Debbie’s suitor, Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor), asks the demon to “take him” instead. Is he trying to impress his girlfriend? Arne is later indicted for murder and the Warrens convince his attorney, with a little help from demonic doll Annabelle, to declare Arne “innocent by reason of demonic possession.”
The film’s first sequence, which ends with Ed in the hospital in need of a stent, is so shoddy looking, I though maybe it was the outtakes. But no, here we are back in Ed and Lorraine Warren-land, where “Ghostbusters” meets “Hart to Hart.” Directed by Michael Chaves of the not-very-impressive 2019 release “The Curse of la Llorona” (not to be confused with Jayro Bustamante’s 2019 critically acclaimed “La Llorona”) and scripted by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (“Aquaman,” “The Conjuring 2”),“The Conjuring 3” is mostly supernatural slop that is so relentlessly dark you cannot see your hand in front of your face throughout most of it.
See Arne in a tree with a chainsaw. Arne thinks he sees his beloved Debbie Glatzel (Sarah Catherine Hook) dancing suggestively to the Blondie hit “Call Me” with dog-kennel co-worker lout Bruno (Ronnie Gene Blevins). The next thing you know, the dead Bruno has 22 stab wounds. The film does not follow Arne’s court case closely. Instead, we discover a”witch’s totem,” which was the cause of the curse and the reason that the imprisoned Arne can read from the Bible (whatever). A “retired” priest named Kastner (spooky John Noble of TV’s “Fringe”), who already seems possessed, enters the picture. He lives in a house in the woods, and has hunted down members of a satanic cult.
Was that a demon or was it just Alice Cooper? Farmiga and Wilson make a good couple. But the Warren marital bliss stuff is annoying. Who is the emaciated looking woman (Eugenie Bondurant, “The Hunger Games: Mockingay”), who reanimates hideous, bloated corpses in a morgue to chase Lorraine? Why is Ed, who has a heart condition, swinging a sledgehammer like a lunatic? Will clairvoyant Lorraine be able to help a Danvers homicide detective find the body of a victim? Why do possessed people in these films now do a bone-cracking contortionist dance that make Regan’s head-turning bit look like child’s play?
I wish I cared. It might have made the 112 minutes go by faster.
(“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” contains terror, violence and disturbing images.)
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Latest ‘Conjuring’ entry: Been there, possessed that - Boston Herald
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