The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do it has a couple of nods to outdated horror movies, though the finale borrows inspiration from Stephen King’s The Shining.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do it has a couple of interesting nods to older horror flicks. It initially pays homage to the Exorcist film when Gordon, The Father from the church comes at the Glatzel house to cope with the possession of the family’s young boy, David.
Additionally, it does take some from adaption from Nightmare on Elm Street as the cult-classic messes with people’s brains, bringing their worst nightmares to reality. Nevertheless, in the finale, the largest tribute goes to Stephen King’s renowned novel, The Shining.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film centred on the psychological meltdown of Nicholson’s Jack Torrance as he’s stricken by ghosts during his stay at an abandoned hotel called the Overlook Hotel. Jack’s psychological condition goes down to the stage that he loses the sense of his identity, creating him to brutally run after his own family and slash them with an axe in his hand.
It has one of cinema’s most legendary sequences, particularly while he tries to chop down the bathroom door down in the famous “Here’s Johnny!” scene to rend up his beloved wife, Wendy. Fortunately, their little kid, Danny, distracts him into a hedge maze and where he gets lost and is left to freeze till he dies, preserving the abandoned hotel from the madman who dropped himself to the hotel’s evil spirits.
The 3rd Conjuring movie starts from this specific descent in madness when Lorraine and Ed face the Occultist right after deducing that the spirit is Isla, the child of the ex-priest Kastner. However, when Ed runs into the catacombs to come across Lorraine, the witch takes Lorraine’s looks blowing a distinctive powder on his face.
This particularly affects Ed, as he starts acting like a mindless violent person, picking up a sledgehammer. His eyes turn ghastly and grey, while he uses the tool inside the tunnels exactly the same way as Jack, smashing everything around his way in order to break Lorraine’s skull.
The facial reactions and grunts as well as body mannerisms each remind us and pay homage to Jack. Fortunately, just when he is intending to attack Lorraine, the spell is broken with memories of their strong and undying love by her
Ed’s rage cools down, and he destroys the altar that Isla utilized to bring up the Satanist powers she possesses which come from hell. This can lead to the witch actually being murdered alternatively, with Lorraine and Ed getting out safely.
Unlike The Shining, Ed does not endure exactly the same words as Jack and it is also spared demise. While it was nature taking revenge for Jack because he has always been a selfish person, caring only about himself, Ed on the other hand is a good, selfless man, so despite him moving around like a killer, things work out for him. So, yeah there’s a good reason why they are called movies and not real-life incidents, even when filmmakers may try to portray them as based on true events.
As a guest on CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast, Michael Chaves spoke about the multiple references from some of Hollywood’s best horror flicks, he stated:
There was actually a lot of debate with that sequence. Not to get into spoilers, but we (talked about) how far we could push it. It’s interesting because, without a doubt, this is a franchise that people love. These are characters that people love. Everybody — the studio, myself, James (Wan) — would have conversations about, ‘We want to push the Warrens to the limit. We want to push the story to the limit. We want it to be filled with surprises.’ But we also need to take great care with what we put them through, and what they do because if you go too far, then you can’t ever walk that back. You can’t ever come back from it. So, there was… it’s probably great for a spoiler podcast discussion about how that was navigated.
It is intriguing because, even though the Conjuring has resulted in multiple spinoffs, Lorraine and Ed, have always been the heart of this particular series, and they have a lot of unexplainable cases which may be utilized to further pull in storylines for Conjuring sequels in the future.
The most unique thing about the franchise is the chemistry shared between Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who truly show ownership to the characters and the franchise as well.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do it, packs in a stellar cast including Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ruairi O ‘Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook and Julian Hilliard, while it is directed by the celebrated director Michael Chaves. You can currently watch the movie in theatres or HBO Max.
