The widely popular Conjuring horror movie franchise continues with its third film and overall eighth installment, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Like previous movies in the Conjuring universe, the latest release is based on a real incident. The plot centers around two paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by the returning Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who are up against one of the most evil forces yet. Set in 1981, it opens with Ed and Lorraine preforming an exorcism on a possessed twelve year old. Another character challenges the possessor to leave the child’s body and possess him instead, which creates chaos. 

Jumpscares were almost nonexistent, but when they were present they weren’t good, and instead there was legitimate storytelling. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It has a familiar and predictable plot, and has a strange rhythm. The basic idea of the plot gets overstretched and eventually loses it’s clutch on the audience when the movie focuses on a completely different murder case. Once Ed and Lorraine Warren discover the witchcraft-y nature of the case they’re investigating, it’s easy to not care and forget what they were after in the first place. Visual imagery is borrowed from other horror films like The Exorcist, and there are many Conjuring universe references throughout the script, including a joke about the haunted Annabelle doll. 

The newest installment of The Conjuring doesn’t quite live up to it’s previous films, and was closer to a dramatic recreation of a true crime case. Based on the real-life case of Arne Johnson, who commits a murder after the events of the prologue, and was the first time in the U.S. where demonic possession was used as defense in a court case. A massive aspect that was missing from this Conjuring installment was a haunted house. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It just doesn’t feel like it belongs in the Conjuring franchise.