The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It marks the first entry into the proper Conjuring series since 2016’s The Conjuring 2, with director Michael Chaves recently claiming his new film will “blow the doors off” the haunted house concept. Despite the first two films being some of the more frightening entries into the haunted house subgenre in the past decade, their narratives are largely contained to one location, with Chaves’ recent tease hinting at a much larger landscape that the new film is set to explore. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It will hit theaters and HBO Max on June 4th.
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“We wanted to blow the doors of the haunted house,” Chaves shared with Total Film, per GamesRadar. “Up until now, these movies have existed inside a certain type of framework. “We were desperate to take them beyond that. [David Fincher’s] Se7en is one of our favorites and we were excited by the challenge of doing something along those lines โ something surrounding an investigation โ within the series, while still using all that supernatural terminology and language.”
The first two films were both based on real-life investigations conducted by Ed and Lorraine Warren, one taking them to a farmhouse in Rhode Island and the other seeing them investigate a home near London. The upcoming sequel will focus on the story of a man who killed his landlord and claimed it was actually the work of a demon who had inhabited him that resulted in the murder, a defense used in his trial.
“There’s a real victim in this story,” Chaves admitted to the outlet. “It weighed heavily on us because we knew we needed to make a movie that was thrilling and scary, and lived up to expectations, but we were also really mindful about being truthful.”
Following the debut installment in the series hitting theaters in 2013, the franchise has expanded in a number of ways, earning spinoffs, sequels, and prequels. While the franchise as a whole has recruited a variety of different storytellers, this new The Conjuring marks the first entry in the proper series that wasn’t directed by James Wan. The pair did, however, work together on The Curse of La Llorona, which Wan produced and Chaves directed and featured unexpected connections to the overall Conjuring franchise.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It will hit theaters and HBO Max on June 4th.
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