Trailer, via Warner Bros..
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Puts a Demon on Trial and Forgets the Trial
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It arrived in 2021 as the seventh film in The Conjuring Universe and the third in the main Conjuring series, the one that follows Ed and Lorraine Warren. Michael Chaves directs. David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick wrote the screenplay from a story he developed with James Wan, and Wan and Peter Safran return to produce.
The hook is a real one: the 1981 trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, the first American murder case in which a defendant claimed demonic possession as a defense. The film is based on that trial, in addition to The Devil in Connecticut, Gerald Brittle’s book about it. The tagline promises “The demonic case that shocked America.” The film gets the hook. It does not get much else.
Brookfield, Connecticut, and the Boy on the Floor
The opening is the best stretch. In 1981, the Warrens document the exorcism of 8-year-old David Glatzel in Brookfield, Connecticut. The family is there — his sister Debbie, her boyfriend Arne Johnson, Father Gordon. When it goes wrong, Arne invites the demon into himself instead of the boy. Ed watches it happen, and the demon causes him to suffer a heart attack.
That’s a clean machine: one sacrifice, two casualties, one witness nobody will believe. Ruairí O’Connor plays Arne, Julian Hilliard plays David, Sarah Catherine Hook makes her feature film debut as Debbie. Charlene Amoia plays Judy Glatzel, Keith Arthur Bolden plays Sergeant Clay, and Sterling Jerins plays Judy Warren. Farmiga and Wilson hold the center as they always have.
Twenty-Two Stab Wounds, Twice Over
A month later, Ed wakes in a hospital and says he saw the demon enter Arne. Arne hallucinates an entity attacking him, then murders his landlord by stabbing him 22 times. The film plants the number carefully. It comes back later, in Danvers, Massachusetts, where detectives find a matching totem in the death of Katie Lincoln — also stabbed 22 times.
The repetition should land hard. It doesn’t. The 22 is a clue, not a wound. The movie treats its own grisliest detail as connective tissue between set pieces, and the horror drains out of it.
A Curse Passed Through a Totem
When the Warrens discover a witch’s totem in the Glatzel home, the film stops being a haunted-house story and becomes an occult conspiracy. A satanic curse moves through the totem. Father Kastner, a former priest played by John Noble, studied the Disciples of the Ram cult and explains that an occultist planted the object deliberately. Eugenie Bondurant plays that occultist. Shannon Kook plays Drew Thomas. The source notes only that Ed is affected by the curse when a totem is involved, without going into detail.
This is where the movie’s attention shifts. The trial of Arne Johnson is what made this case notorious. The Warrens consider the acquittal of Michael Taylor for murder in England, which makes Arne’s case the first American murder trial where demonic possession is claimed as a defense. My read is that the courtroom sits at the edge of the film while the occult thread takes the center, and that choice costs the movie its subject.
Lorraine’s Vision in Danvers
The best idea in the back half is that Lorraine’s visions produce actual evidence. She learns through a vision that Jessica, Katie’s missing friend, murdered Katie while possessed and then jumped to her death. Detectives recover the body because of what Lorraine saw. Later, Lorraine watches the occultist try to make Arne kill himself and stops it — which makes the occultist aware of the Warrens’ presence.
That’s a genuine mechanic, not a jump scare. A book of Stregherian witchcraft states that for the curse to be lifted, the occultist’s altar must be destroyed. The source does not say how the film stages its ending, so I’ll leave that alone. What I can say is that the occult material, not the trial, is where the film spends its back half.
What the Case Files Give Up
Development for a third Conjuring film began in 2016. Wan said he wouldn’t direct another in the series because of scheduling conflicts, and Safran said the next film wouldn’t be a haunted house movie. By June 2017, a third installment was officially announced, with Johnson hired to write. Chaves was named director after The Curse of La Llorona (2019). In December 2018, Wilson and Farmiga were confirmed to reprise their roles. In August 2019, Megan Ashley Brown and Mitchell Hoog were announced as young Lorraine and Ed. In December 2019, Jerins, Hilliard, Hook and O’Connor were confirmed as cast. Filming took place in Georgia in mid-2019.
Originally slated for a September 2020 release, the film was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It runs 111 minutes and carries the genres Horror, Mystery and Thriller.
The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 worked because they were contained: one house, one family, one clock. The Devil Made Me Do It wants the opposite — a cult, a curse, a missing woman, a second murder, a Massachusetts road trip, and a trial it treats as background. Every strong image gets abandoned before it lands. The swap is the problem.
Farmiga and Wilson are good enough to carry a lesser film, and they nearly do. What they can’t fix is a script that treats its best material — the possession defense, the courtroom, the thing that made this case infamous — as setup for a hunt. The occultist is a fine villain. She’s also a distraction from the story the title sells.
KEY FACTS
- Release: 2021
- Runtime: 111 minutes
- Director: Michael Chaves
- Screenplay: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, from a story by Johnson-McGoldrick and James Wan
- Producers: James Wan and Peter Safran
- Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Sterling Jerins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Ruairí O’Connor, Julian Hilliard, Charlene Amoia, John Noble, Eugenie Bondurant, Shannon Kook, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Keith Arthur Bolden
- Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
- Tagline: “The demonic case that shocked America.”
- Filming: Georgia, mid-2019
- Original release date: September 2020, delayed by COVID-19
- Metacritic: 53/100
- Score: 5.3/10
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It isn’t a bad movie. It keeps choosing the wrong one of its own ideas. The exorcism of David Glatzel is terrifying. The trial of Arne Johnson is fascinating. The film gives you a little of the first and almost none of the second, then asks you to care about an altar in a room you’ve never visited. For a series built on making the ordinary unbearable, this one spends too much of its time away from the case that made it.
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