Movie Review: 'The Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It' A Demon Possessed Waterbed???

A demon possessed a waterbed! That’s what we’re going with for the latest in The Conjuring franchise? The whole movie hinges on a demon possessed waterbed? I certainly didn’t have The Conjuring franchise paying homage to director George Berry’s legendary 1977 horror camp classic, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats on my 2021 bingo card, but here we are. A boy splashes down on a demonic waterbed and a drunken landlord that the kid has never met ends up dead. Sure, why not.

Returning to their brilliantly stylized and high camp roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren are Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Underplaying the comedy more than ever before, Wilson and Farmiga are a delight as they swish about in 70’s camp, Farmiga especially doing some wonderful wig work in this latest demonic possession romp. No surprise, the story of The Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It focuses on yet another of Ed and Lorraine’s greatest cons.

The story picks up with Ed and Lorraine in the home of 11 year old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard). David has been possessed by an ancient evil and Ed, Lorraine and the latest in their series of nameless priests, played here by Steve Coulter, are attempting to exorcise the demon with the aid of David’s sister, Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook), and her boyfriend, Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor).

The exorcism is seemingly successful except that the demon managed to give Ed Warren a heart attack. Oh, and the unnamed evil entity also escaped into the body of Arne to set up the rest of the story. With Ed being the only one aware of the demon transfer, and him being in a brief coma, Arne goes on with his life and the slow crawl toward a true tragedy begins. The demon turns Arne into a murderer when, in a fit of jealous rage, Arne murders his landlord, Bruno (Ronnie Gene Blevins).

In the classic style of the Warren’s the slimy con artists they are, The Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It has Bruno portrayed as a complete jerk, an obnoxious, drunken letch who probably deserved to be stabbed more than 20 times by a guy inhabited by a demonic presence. This sets up for the trial of the century, in 1981 terms, as Arne claims ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’ and Ed and Lorraine Warren step up as expert witnesses for Arne’s claim of demonic possession even though even they had to admit, he wasn’t possessed anymore after the murder. Weird, it’s almost like they made it up so that Arne Johnson didn’t blow their con.

Even I, a huge fan of the comedy styling's of Ed and Lorraine Warren must admit, it seems rather an interesting coincidence that they happened to come up with this whole ‘the demon switched bodies’ thing just days after they exorcised a little boy with Arne present. It’s as if Arne Johnson could have blown the Warren’s whole exorcism scam and instead of letting that happen they cooked up the whole ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’ nonsense to keep Arne quiet and in line after he murdered a man during a drunken brawl.

But nah, of course not. Clearly a demonic waterbed came to life, possessed a little boy, switched into Arne Johnson’s body with the help of a demonic cult and forced him to murder his landlord in a drunken rage. That’s a far more logical conclusion. Ouch, even for a Gen X-er like myself that sarcasm was a bit tortured. I have to laugh at The Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It in order to keep from growing unreasonably angry over how Hollywood continues to burnish the legends of the con artists, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

It is truly some sort of cosmic joke that in death, Ed and Lorraine Warren get to be the heroes they always played at being in their series of con games and book deals. They profited for years off of their lies and while it's our fault as a society that they were allowed to thrive as they did in life, it's just as much our fault that they continue to profit in death via a Hollywood willing to turn them into legends in order to turn a buck. And we should all be ashamed but were not, because no one appears to care. Give us another adequate jump scare and we all turn a collective blind eye to the lying con artists being rendered as heroes by an unscrupulous industry chasing a buck in a fashion that would make the Warren's proud.

Never mind that Ed and Lorraine tried to provide cover for a murder so that the killer wouldn’t blow their exorcism con, no, let’s just pretend they were heroic demon fighters, 20 years younger and a hundred times more attractive than they ever actually were. There’s that anger I was trying to avoid coming out again. It’s frustrating because there is a good deal of skill that goes into the making of The Conjuring movies.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are talented and appealing actors who deserve better than to be used as paint brushes to touch up the fakery of Ed and Lorraine Warren from con artists to heroes. There was no need to call the characters Ed and Lorraine Warren. They could have been named anything and still used the same stories and filmic techniques and it wouldn’t be so insidious. But no, the series is forever tainted by associating heroic qualities with a pair of hucksters who profited off of the genuine feelings of faith that millions of people hold dear.

They get to call forth God as if they had a direct line to the almighty and the world just pretends and goes along for the ride because it's all so exciting and it's obviously not real so who cares. I care, I can't stand this. The Warren's weren't religious superheroes, they were negligent con artists who duped people via religion into going along with their schemes for a profit. Painting them as heroes, even in the outsized world of these movies is, at the very least, irresponsible.

I know, it’s not about the real Ed and Lorraine Warren. But, any time someone looks up Ed and Lorraine Warren today, instead of seeing a pair of disgraced and discredited con artists, they find these movies and a cult like fandom who loves them. Instead of generations ignoring them for eternity, as was their fate prior to these movies being made, Hollywood portrays Ed and Lorraine Warren as heroes when they should be remembered as charlatans.

And I am just sick and tired of con artist and charlatans being turned into Hollywood legends. I'm reminded of what Hollywood did for P.T Barnum a couple years ago with The Greatest Showman. Instead of portraying Barnum as the exploiter of the downtrodden and a horrific racist, and con artist, that he truly was, he's now, in the public imagination, Hugh Jackman with a song in his heart and a beloved family of outcasts who loved him. Total and complete B.S from a historic perspective but nevertheless.

Surely, it's true, that we have a duty to ourselves not to allow history to be forgotten but when Hollywood turns monsters into I.P heroes and they begin to paint over the past with a sheen of lovely fakery for profit, we risk reality being lost, history being forgotten, and historic villains being treated as heroes. For arguments sake, let's say, a Hollywood buys the life rights to some monster, they begin a campaign to sell that monster back to us by scrubbing negative aspects of that monster out of existence in order to up the value of their I.P. Exactly what are we to do to stop that? What's to prevent future generations from getting the P.T Barnum of The Greatest Showman or The Warren's of The Conjuring rather than the harsh truth of who these people really were?