Sightlines · reception

How The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was received

2021 · Michael Chaves · The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It on Sightlines

The arc

Landed in summer 2021 to the mildest reviews of the main trilogy — the consensus 'weak one' for swapping James Wan's haunted-house clockwork for an occult detective story — and five years on that verdict has barely budged, no reappraisal wave in sight.

What’s debated

The perennial fight: does The Conjuring work without Wan behind the camera, or was the pivot from haunted house to supernatural procedural a franchise losing its nerve?

Its footprint

Its real cultural hook predates the movie — the 1981 'Devil Made Me Do It' trial that gave it its title — while on Letterboxd the film mostly lives as fuel for the running joke that Ed and Lorraine Warren are horror's greatest rom-com couple.

Where it stands

Franchise filler in cinephile memory: seen by everyone who did the Conjuring run, canonized by almost no one.

Did you know? It's based on the 1981 trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, reportedly the first known U.S. murder case in which the defense claimed the accused was demonically possessed.

Named by the director

• Se7en (1995) — Chaves said he and producer James Wan explicitly wanted 'Se7en for the Conjuring Universe' — a supernatural detective thriller rather than another haunted house.
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991) — Chaves cited it alongside Se7en, saying he wanted the film to feel like 'a supernatural Silence of the Lambs.'
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) — Chaves confirmed in interviews that the film deliberately nods to the Dream Master waterbed scene.

A Deleuzian reading of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It →