Last night I went to The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Now I must admit that I watched the first Conjuring, but I never saw the second one. I figured I would be fine if I didn’t catch up on my Conjuring lore.

A young boy is possessed by a demon and the demon is passed to his sister’s boyfriend. The boyfriend ends up getting in over his head with his newly found friend. Ed and Lorraine Warren try to exorcise the demon with great difficulty. That’s essentially the plot of this movie. It turns out that I was completely correct in the thought that I did not need to catch up on my Conjuring lore. This movie is just a continuation of Ed and Lorraine’s story. Each of the Conjuring movies are sort of stand alone stories within their bigger story. They are trying really hard to flesh out Ed and Lorraine and have a deeper connection to them.

I distinctly remember thinking that the original Conjuring was sort of boring and bland. I am glad to say that The Devil Made Me Do It continues this perfectly! It is still boring and bland. I honestly just don’t care about this movie. I did not care about any of these characters and the movie does not really give me a reason to. Maybe a die-hard fan would disagree, but I ultimately just do not care about what plays out in this movie.

At the end of the day, it just another exorcism movie and follows exactly what you think is going to happen. A trained AI could write an exorcism story and it would be about the same as The Devil Made Me Do It. It’s simple and nothing really stands out here. Now I know that I’m not the biggest Conjuring universe fan, but I think most people would recognize that this story has been done before.

Now I have a very narrow window of things that scare me. This is not a brag or anything, I just don’t get scared very easily. Which, for me, actually sucks. I WANT to be scared. I love the feeling of uneasiness and not being able to sleep because you know something is going to kill you. I love that shit. That’s probably why I love scary movies so much in the first place. I bring this up because, The Devil Made Me Do It is completely void of scares? There are plenty of times when the music builds up like it should be scary, but then someone just puts their hands around someone’s neck and leaves? Nothing really scary ever happens? In fact, some of the stuff that gets built up as scary is laugh out loud funny? Like a 300 pound naked man running full sprint down a stairwell. It’s hilarious to be honest. I think a lot of this is because there is no build up in suspense. The movie shows its card in the very first scene. You see the demon, you see who it has possessed, and you get to follow it the entire time. There is never any suspense because you know exactly what is coming. This also might be because this movie’s predictability, but it honestly just never gets anywhere. You’re never able to truly be afraid because there is never a reason to be? The music turns more ominous and a demon walks into frame. That’s all that ever happens. The Devil Made Me Do It is a lot of nothing? Nothing really happens and nothing really matters. It’s just a bad story to be honest.

And that’s all there is to say. I now realize why I completely forgot the original Conjuring movie. They’re just boring movies. I don’t care about the characters and I’m not getting scared watching it. There really isn’t a point in watching this movie. I know what the demon looks like in the very first scene and the movie lost any chance of buildup after that. In fact, I kept hoping the bad guy would win just so we could get the story over with. Overall, I give The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It a 0.5 out of 4. It’s fine… It’s a movie. But it’s not scary, it’s boring, and I honestly just don’t care about it. I will probably never watch this movie again and I don’t care if I don’t. Which is sad, because I love good scary movies more than anything and The Conjuring is the frontrunner for big budget scary movies nowadays.

Also, one last thing: I know someone who is genuinely terrified by these movies because they are “based on a true story.” Yes Ed and Lorraine are real people. And yes the recording at the end of the movie is the real exorcism of the little kid from back in the day. And yes someone pleaded not guilty in court because of demonic possession. But I mean… If you look up the real story, it is obvious that all of that shit is completely, entirely made up. Just like the rest of this movie. It is loosely loosely based a true story. And that true story is that Ed, Lorraine, and Arne existed at some point.