The first two Conjuring films followed a pattern. They began with Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) on a case. It won’t be the case that consumes the rest of the film, and they don’t actually show us much of it. But it does show us a bit of who the Warrens are and what they are about. It also sets up the villains for some side-quels.
Then we’ll shift to the family who will be haunted for the rest of the film. For half the film, it will cut back and forth between the Warrens doing their thing and the haunted family getting increasingly haunted.
There isn’t anything special about that setup, but it worked. It helped develop our characters and slowly ramped up the hauntings. For this, the third film in the franchise, they switched things up a bit. It does begin with the Warrens on a case. A young boy has been possessed; the Warrens are doing their best to free the child from the demon. Things go haywire. The demon nearly kills Ed. He has a heart attack.
But just as things are getting truly terrifying, a man named Arne (Ruairi O’Connor), who is the boyfriend of the possessed boy’s sister, demands that the demon leave the boy alone and enter him. It does, and things return to normal. For a while. But then Arne kills his landlord. At his trial, he pleads not guilty due to possession.
The formula has changed. The opening case isn’t tangentially related to our main plot; it is the main plot. In addition to that, whereas in the first two films we spend a great deal of time with the family as the haunting ramps up, this film is about a guy in prison. We get a few spooky scenes in the prison, but mostly this is the Warrens’ film.
They find a totem underneath the possessed kid’s house. That’s the sign of a devil-worshipping cult. The film then becomes a mystery. The Warrens try to figure out who put the totem there and what for.
All of this throws the balance off. What made the first two films work so well is that you got to know these characters. Not just the Warrens but the other families too. That made us care about their spiritual plight. We don’t get that with Arne or the rest of the family.
We’ve already spent two films with the Warrens. We’ve gotten to know them pretty well. Wilson and Farmiga are good actors, and they make the Warrens come alive. The central theme of these films is how their love for each other transcends all of the horror. But the more I watch these films, the more the real Warrens slip into my mind, and they were charlatans. That keeps tainting my feelings toward the films. Keeping the focus on them doesn’t help matters.
Neither does this satanic cult story. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t all that interesting either. There are some decent scares throughout, but it doesn’t build the tension like the other films did. And thus it becomes just another standard horror film without anything that makes it stand out.