REVIEW #54 The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The latest instalment of The Conjuring sticks with Ed and Lorraine Warren as they take on one of the worst cases of their careers. After a failed attempt at an exorcism sees the demon jump to take on a new host, a brutal murder soon occurs where Ed and Lorraine must convince a jury of demonic possession to prevent the death penalty. They soon realise that it isn’t a normal case.

CAST & THE ACTING 

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson reprise their roles as Lorraine and Ed Warren and do well to portray the convincing characters as they take on another case. Julian Hilliard plays the initially possessed young boy David and he does brilliantly, for such a young actor he really does deliver a great performance. Especially in the opening 20 minutes or so. Ruairi O’Connor plays Arne and similarly to Julian, he delivers a strong performance showing a real range of ability throughout the journey of his character. Overall I think the acting was actually pretty good, however they were let down by the storyline because with a more gripping plot I think it could have been a good film.

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

The storyline was just so predictable, which is one of the main reasons I hate horror films. They focus to much on trying to make the audience jump instead of actually coming up with a gripping and thoughtful plot. Even the jumpy parts weren’t even that great and that’s really the only thing the film had going for it. You could pretty much guess what was going to happen at every stage of the film which meant I just lost interest pretty quickly. I also have an issue with the whole ‘based on a true story’ element because it’s clearly a ploy to get the audience freaked out before they even get into the film but actually it is 90% dramatised so I wish they didn’t use that. This is the category which really let the film down, I was hoping to be proven wrong about my hate for horror films but once again I was left disappointed!

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

The special effects were good, they looked believable and the realism helped make the film slightly more ‘scary’. If the special effects were bad then it would just become a comedy very quickly! However on that point, the prosthetics or effects, whatever they used to create the rather overweight, naked corpse that chases Ed and Lorraine in the film were actually more comical then scary. The entire cinema just laughed every time it appeared which is not what you want for a horror film. The cinematography was good enough and some of the films were captured really well but it wasn’t enough to turn this bad film into a good one unfortunately.

OVERALL (6/10)

This film is actually what made me change the format of my reviews because the acting was actually pretty good and the cinematography and special effects were good too and based on my previous reviews the scores for those two categories alone would bring up the overall score. However this was a bad film and I had to give it a score to reflect that, so I am no longer scoring each category. I am a person who hates horrors, not because I’m easily scared but because I find 90% of horror films solely rely on making the audience jump instead of coming up with a gripping, frightening plot. I hoped this film would change my mind but it didn’t. It was predictable, it wasn’t scary in the slightest and even the jumpy parts weren’t great either. So a 6 is a fair score in my opinion, credit to the cast they delivered strong performances but it wasn’t enough to make up for an awful plot.

Thanks for reading.

Callan