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March 29, 2024, 01:04:59 AM

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The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (actual title)

Started by BritishHobo, April 24, 2021, 08:05:47 PM

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BritishHobo

Or alternatively: The Conjuring: The Devil Didn't Make Me Do It, The Warrens Are Just Opportunistic Grifter Scumbags.

I have long documented my dislike for the Conjuring franchise and its near-propaganda deification of a pair of fraudulent cunts abandoning their daughter to take advantage of people by pretending to be saviours. But this time the franchise really is going all-in on the bullshit. For this third entry, they're adapting the time where the Warrens interfered in an actual murder case by trying to claim the suspect was possessed by a demon they had previously exorcised from a child. Top bants, Warrens, peddling your Most Haunted bullshit in an actual court of law while grieving relatives of a murdered man weep in the gallery.

The trailer is mad, and makes it look as if the film has abandoned horror in favour of a courtroom drama where the whole legal system is on trial. Parts of it are bizarrely God's-Not-Dead-esque, with wholesome Ed Warren pontificating about why the courts acknowledge religion but not ghosts!!!! THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS OUT OF ORDER

Wonder if the film will include the time when the brother of the 'possessed' little boy sued for libel, claiming that the entire thing had been a hoax perpetrated by the Warrens, who took advantage of his mentally ill brother. Or the time when their father denied ever saying his son was possessed. It's not in the trailer!

Catalogue Trousers

It's all going to be Annabelle's fault, isn't it? For all of the obnoxiousness of the Warrens, this franchise's hyping of this frankly unimportant doll is what really pisses me off about it.

Noodle Lizard

Ah what a load of shit.

Quote from: YouTube comment/quote]Directors should take note from the Conjuring films when wanting to make an actual spine chilling scary film

???
This one has a ghost in a water bed.

wooders1978

I think the conjuring films are ok, spooky enough - hoping Hollywood end up doing acorra soon

BlodwynPig

Quote from: wooders1978 on April 25, 2021, 09:21:18 AM
I think the conjuring films are ok, spooky enough - hoping Hollywood end up doing acorra soon

Pipes 2 would be class.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: wooders1978 on April 25, 2021, 09:21:18 AMhoping Hollywood end up doing acorra soon

Now there's an idea. The Acorahverse. Pretty sure the first episode of Most Haunted had him communicating with the ghost of a royal pet monkey. Surely there's a film in that.

holyzombiejesus

I saw him live once and he genuinely claimed he saw the ghost of a gerbil run across the stage. There was a Q&A section with the audience and someone asked "Why are you so full of shit?" which threw him a bit. Sam went quiet for that one.

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: BritishHobo on April 24, 2021, 08:05:47 PM
... makes it look as if the film has abandoned horror in favour of a courtroom drama where the whole legal system is on trial. Parts of it are bizarrely God's-Not-Dead-esque, with wholesome Ed Warren pontificating about why the courts acknowledge religion but not ghosts!!!! THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS OUT OF ORDER

The Exorcism of Emily Rose took a similar approach, interweaving a load of Grishamming involving a priest charged with the murder of a woman he had been trying to rid of demons, with flashback scenes depicting the exorcism itself and the events leading up to it, all of which prove beyond all doubt that it was indeed the demons that did it after all. The names were changed and location shifted but it was quite obviously based on the death of Anneliese Michel, and as such served little purpose other than to exonerate the priest who killed her in 1976. Or helped kill her. The German film Requiem from around the same time tackled the same material from a very different perspective. I actually think ...Emily Rose works quite well for what it is, but it's still pretty fucking offensive. And in the current climate, actively dangerous.

I struggle with this sort of stuff because one of my favourite films of all time is Amityville II: The Possession, and what Damiano Damiani did with the DeFeo murders in that, less than a decade after they had happened, was every bit as reprehensible as what the Conjuring films (which I have enjoyed in fits and starts) do with the cases the Warrens were involved with (one of which was, of course, the Amityville case itself).

If we start trying to decide which historical traumas or traumatic events it's alright for a horror film to run with, and which ones it must leave alone, or must approach in a certain way, then we're going to get knotted up in ourselves fairly quickly. I personally found the recent Irish horror The Devil's Doorway, which essentially let the church off the hook for what happened in The Magdalene Laundries, blaming instead a shower of rogue nuns in league with Satan, really fucking objectionable, but I wouldn't argue that it shouldn't have been made. I would question the motives of the people who did make it, but that's a different thing. 

Noodle Lizard

I think the main issue I (and, presumably, BritishHobo) have with this deifying of the Warrens specifically is that they are real, quite bad people being portrayed as almost superheroes in this series of films, not to mention directly profiting from them until Lorraine died[nb]I'm more or less alright with their daughter seeing some of that, it's the least they could do[/nb]. Of course horror films have always taken "true events" and turned them into god-knows-what for the sake of fun, and there's definitely some argument to be made about the ethics of that, but to name and elevate a real-life couple quite as wretched as the Warrens to ledge-status is another matter entirely. I may have felt more forgiving if the films were actually any good, but I doubt we'll ever know.

Of course, those involved could have made the exact same films with no pretense of them being based on truth and nobody would've been any the wiser, but they figured it's more marketable to heavily imply they're all more or less factual and use real names and "true events" prologue/epilogue text etc. to strengthen that suggestion. In my mind there's a big difference between that and, f'rinstance, Amityville II taking inspiration from a real-life mass murder to make a film that nobody in their right mind would think was at all representative of any sort of truth. If I remember correctly, there's nothing in the film itself to suggest that either.

I dunno. It's a chat to to be had, in any event.

Noodle Lizard

This is on the HBO Max now (so I'm assuming it's "available"). I'll withhold full judgment for now since we only watched half of it last night, but ... oof. If you thought the Warren-worship in the others was bad, this one will blow your mind. Even if they weren't based on real people who were significantly more of a joke than the ones presented in the films, it'd still be stretching credulity to have such flawless protagonists. In this one, they really seem to be doubling down on the "having the last laugh" aspects of The Warrens owning boring rational types with demons and magic, even casually using Lorraine's psychic superpowers to solve an impossible murder case as part of a bargain with a doubting cop or implicitly setting Annabelle loose on a lawyer who doesn't want to take the case.

The Warrens are both dead now, but maybe it was in the contract that these movies must attempt some score-settling for all the times they were laughed out of police stations, media outlets and (in the Enfield case) outright refused entry to the supposed spook-sites. That's very much what it feels like, anyway - they're right about everything all the time and everyone will pay for not acknowledging their brilliance.

They also bizarrely recreated the most iconic shot from The Exorcist almost wholesale - with an exorcist (dressed exactly the same as Father Merrin) getting out of a taxi and looking up at a house in which there's a possessed child going on. I'm sure they'd say it was an homage, but it just came off as a really, really weird thing to do. Have a look, it happens within the first 10 minutes.

We're finishing it tonight. Perhaps it gets really good.

BritishHobo

SPOILERS

It only gets worse. The Conjuring 2 was the first film I ever saw with my Odeon Limitless card, so for nice symmetry I made this my first ever Cineworld Unlimited film. Even for a Conjuring film it is ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS

The whole plot of the charlatan cunts having to defend a possessed man in court is thrown out the window very quickly. Much speechifying, emphasised in the trailer, about the good good Warrens having to prove the existence of Satan and ghosts in court, to save an innocent man from the death penalty. The writers obviously realised that's an unworkable plot so switch gears jarringly to them having to defeat the demon. Even though it's done its job and wouldn't give a fuck about the outcome of a trial. So they have to bolt on all this stupid extraneous stuff about Satanist cults[nb]And what a lazy, shallow, nebulous boogeyman to use. They keep talking about how Satanists love chaos snd want kids to die, it's so basic.[/nb], and the demon having to kill another person for some reason, who of course turns out to be Ed. If a ghostly occurrence happens and it isn't about tbe Warrens, did it really happen?

It is, as you say, the 'based on a true story' aspect of the franchise at its most threadbare and offensive. As if it's not bad enough that the Warrens commandeered a tragic murder case in real life in order to perpetuate their grift, the film takes these real people and further hollows out their lives in order to deify Lorraine Warren. Taking a murdered man and passing off his death as the plan of an evil demon. The premise just doesn't fucking work. They know they're making up all the bullshit about Lorraine's convenient visions, and the demon targeting Ed, so how can they justify taking a real murder case and acting like the huckster Warrens were the heroes? It's a whole different ballgame to simply pretending they defeated the Enfield poltergeist - this was a real man's death, you can't use that to further prop up your wank-fantasies about how noble and goodly this billy bullshitter so-called paranormal investigator was. Portraying the dead man as a weirdo alcoholic creep, and the killer as a lovely family man feels extra tasteless when it's all in service of exalting the Warrens.

In the credits, the film casually drops the information that yer murder suspect escaped the death penalty. It's like the film wants you to think that was the Warrens' doing, that they saved his life. They obviously neglect to mention that in real life the bloke switched his plea from 'demonic possession' to 'self-defence'. It's the cherry on top of a nasty, half-baked entry into the franchise, which feints doing something different before just doing the same old shit. God spoonfeeds Lorraine the plot via her made-up visions, a sweaty, bulging Ed risks his physical health repeatedly while never mentioning the neglected daughter who would end up without a father because his dodgy heart gave out while he was running about in forests and spooky houses pretending to fight ghosts.

I don't see where the franchise can go from here. Its already sparse box-of-tricks is now as empty as the guff that Lorraine Warren spouts; clunky scares, a whiplash tonal imbalance, and the repeated doubling-down on the Warrens' already-discredited horseshit. It's like making a film that shows OJ Simpson not murdering Nicole Brown Simpson, and at the end he catches the real killer and is a hero.

This is a film about two shameless scumbags who take advantage of a mentally-ill child and a murderer so they can make money and look heroic; a gross, hateful grift which is being justified and celebrated anew with this film. Annabelle's not the real monster in that house.

If Lorraine Warren would like to respond to my criticism, I am reachable by ouija board, via which you can use one of my IKEA glasses to spell out the sentence 'the spirit world isn't real and I'm a lying piece of shit'.

Noodle Lizard

Oh, well I've got that to look forward to tonight, then.

Another point that sort of applies to all of these films, and it's not a criticism as such but - they make it clear that the Warrens are on the side of God/Jesus, and that the demons are all variously "of Satan", but they fall short of actually making any pertinent statements about religion or faith one way or the other. Like, we basically have religious superheroes as our protagonists, but they don't seem to have the bottle to really even acknowledge the faith-based part of what they do - presumably because it would make them less "cool" to modern audiences and/or China. Surely, though, if you rely on Christ's name to wage war against the enemies of God, you'd be pretty fucking dogmatically Christian. The real-life Warrens certainly were (or at least pretended to be). I don't think you actually see them pray or even invoke God's name - they draft in a token priest character for that.

Something like The Exorcist uses all the demonic goings-on as a template to examine crises of faith quite thoughtfully, whereas The Conjuring films just seem to have faith there as a trope or convenient grammar every so often. The real heroes are The Warrens, the real villains are abstract notions of "EVIL". Not saying they need to make any kind of statement, just that it seems odd that it's not really been addressed in any of the 10 or so films in this universe so far.

Noodle Lizard

^ Never mind, they ramped up the Jesus chat in the second half.

It's not good, and somehow even less scary than the others in the series. The fact that all the court stuff was dropped entirely once they showed the Warrens winning over that lawyer is hilarious, but I suppose there's only so much lying they can do about a well-documented court case (in reality, it seems the "demonic possession" defense was rejected outright by the judge before the trial began).

The actual villain and demon made no sense whatsoever, though it was quite funny to have
Spoiler alert
the dad explain to Lorraine how his behaviour and obsession ruined his daughter's life, with her just staring blankly back at him - their own daughter is presumably still alone back at the house being tormented by all their pet demons
[close]
.

BritishHobo

Granted I did have a little bit of a sleep near the end, but the demon made no sense to me either. Have I got it right that its plan was
Spoiler alert
'I need to make one person kill another, and then make that person kill themselves'?
[close]

Either way I would have liked to have seen a post-credits scene where they arrive home and fill their horrified, shaking daughter in on what they've been been up to at work. "Well first of all
Spoiler alert
a demon possessed your father, so he was strangling me, really trying to choke me to death - and then, he only found a bloody sledgehammer! There he was, chasing me round, trying to smash my brains out, all the while his heart is ready to give out completely...
[close]
you would have howled with laughter!"

MoreauVasz

I like both the Conjuring and its sequel.

I agree that the series' hagiographic treatment of the Warrens is both weird and wildly inappropriate given that they were demonstrably fraudulent cunts but I'm less bothered by the decision to turn fraudulent ghost hunters into super heroes than I am the weird Catholic realism that runs through the franchise. In Conjuring 2, Mrs Warren isn't just a super hero, she's some kind of Angelic being imbued with Christian super powers.

I'll be interested to see if Conjuring 3 is awful as there have been a load of weird spin-offs since Conjuring 2 and all of them have been tugid Tesco Dvd-aisle crap suggesting that the producers are struggling with quality control.

Noodle Lizard

Annabelle Comes Home was about the only one I found at all enjoyable. Perhaps I was in a good mood. Aside from the obligatory "emotionally resonant" bits, it was just a bunch of various spooks going mental in a house, which is about as much as you can hope for from one of these. I like that it at least tried to address how miserable the Warrens' daughter is because of them as well, even though there's really no resolution to that and at the end it just sort of lands on "but they're great anyway, of course".