The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

This feels the least creative out of all of these main films. I think the first one is fine, the second one is strong and this one is worse than both. There are cool moments but the majority of the film feels a little uninspired. I think the reason, among the fact the film is less daring with its scares, is down to direction and setting. The thing that made the second film stand out so much to me was the setting was a genuinely interesting approach to a haunted house archetype and was something I hadn't seen done in contemporary horror. This film's locations felt like sets from horror films that I've seen before that have presented these ideas better. The direction had its moments but the actual choices in dialogue and character-building scenes felt so boring and did not lend itself to what could've been great visual storytelling. Something that is also becoming more apparent in modern horror is a filmmakers disregard for the scenes that aren't 'scary' when they are just as if not more important than the spooky ones. Also, these movies have had some really creative villains and this film introduced no one that was as visually captivating as the iconography that has already been produced in this franchise. That bit where there were two Lorraine's in that tunnel was great though and the mini-subversion where Ed was trying to kill that dead fat man but was actually running at Lorraine was strong. As I said, it has strong sections but it fell a little flat for me.