Calling the Conjuring series the most commercially successful horror IP since the 21st century is no exaggeration.
In 2013, the first "Conjuring" grossed $318 million at the box office at a cost of $20 million. Since then, "The Conjuring 2", "Anna Bell: Birth", and "The Nun" have also grossed more than $300 million worldwide. As a generally low-cost horror genre, the "Conjuring" series has become a gold-sucking giant.
This also makes the new "Conjuring 3" after six years, which has become the annual expectation of many horror film fans. However, as soon as the film opened its score on Douban, it quickly dropped from 7.7 points to 6.6 points, becoming the lowest reputation in the canon trilogy.
Some people even say that although Wen Ziren served as the producer and screenwriter of this film, without his own deity, the quality of the film cannot be guaranteed.
So, what exactly is Conjuring 3 missing from its predecessors? Why is it that only Wen Ziren's own control of the tube can turn the tide?
First, let's take a look at what kind of story "The Conjuring 3" tells.
Similar to the gimmicks of the Conjuring series, the film is still based on what is known as "true events," the title of "The Devil Made Me Do It, which the devil forced me to do).
In 1981, a boy named Arne Johnson killed the landlord, Alan Bono, and was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder in court.
However, the case is full of doubts, one is that the landlord's son claims that their house has been haunted before, and his family does not dare to live so he rents it out; second, Arne himself also defended in court: This is what the devil forced me to do, not my intention.
So the judge invited the Warrens to assess Arne's mental condition and even perform an exorcism ritual. Subsequently, the Warrens proved Arn's "demonic possession.".
In the end, however, the judge could not use this as a reason to convict Arn of murder and sentenced him to ten years in prison for manslaughter, but in fact, Arne was released after only five years in prison.
The "Devil Forced Me to Do" incident epitomized the wave of demonic possession throughout the eighties, during which a large number of murderers claimed to have suffered the same fate as Arne.
This incident is not the first time that film adaptations have been carried out. In 1982, NBC adapted it into the TV movie "Murder of the Devil," and in 2006, an episode of the Discovery Channel documentary series Ghost Sensen, "The Devil's Forbidden Land," was also revived, with interviews with people like Arne and Lorraine Warren.
However, "The Conjuring 3" is not a historical reproduction of The Anne's case, but only uses this as a pretext to tell the exorcism story of Ed and Lorraine.
At the beginning of the film, the Warrens perform an exorcism ceremony for a young boy named David in the mansion, but in the end, they are unsuccessful, and the demon is transferred from David's body to Arn's body.
When everyone thought the exorcism was successful, only the fainting Ed knew about it. But when Ed wakes up, it's too late, and the demon confuses Arne's eyes and uses the illusion to drive him to stab the landlord to death, causing tragedy.
In order to overturn the case for Arn, the Warrens began to collect various clues, and they found flaws in another murder case and found similarities between the two. Lorraine, who was able to "understand yin and yang", finally realized that all this was not accidental, but a nun who was proficient in witchcraft was manipulating all this behind the scenes.
Eventually, the couple found the nun's abode and worked together to destroy her altar of Satan and save Arn's life.
Audiences who have watched the first two parts of "The Conjuring" a little bit have found that "The Conjuring 3" has great changes in the story alone. The latter is more like David Finch's Zodiac, where a group of people use various means to search for clues and try to find the real culprit behind the scenes.
Therefore, horror is no longer the first impression left on the audience, and the crime suspense is instead noisy. From this point of view alone, "The Conjuring 3" has already lost its original intention.
Of course, the absurdity and incorrectness of "The Conjuring 3" are not only reflected in the story level. Although director Michael Chávez had his mentor Wen Ziren personally pointed out on the scene when he first filmed, pondering the sense of proportion of the horror atmosphere, his set of means, compared with Wen Ziren, was really too far behind.
Looking at Wen Ziren's first two "Summoning Souls", both in the construction of the horror atmosphere, the construction of the closed place, and the creation of emotional connections, they hit the weak points that are most likely to collapse in the audience's heart.
The first is the construction of the horror atmosphere. Wen Ziren always let the characters gradually feel abnormal in their daily lives, discovering an unknown existence; after that, the characters began to be invaded, tortured, intimidated, and then frightened by the demons; finally, the demons were possessed by a certain character and white-bladed relatives around them.
This is what Ed proposed in the first part: the three stages of appearance, harassment, and possession. The purpose is to allow the audience to substitute for the characters in the film, feel what they feel, and be afraid of them.
As soon as "The Conjuring 3" begins, it is Ed, Lorraine and the priest who perform intense exorcism rituals, and since then, there have been similar frontal confrontations in the story. When the "demonic possession" is normalized, and the two stages of "appearance" and "harassment" are directly skipped, the film is no longer shocking and frightening.
Simply put, The Conjuring 3 makes "horror" scenes cheap.
Closely related to this is the structure of the closed place. Some people have ridiculed Wen Ziren's two "Summoning Spirits", saying that their stories must take place in the big villa, as if there is some kind of inexplicable complex.
Wen Ziren doesn't really care whether he really has a complex about this, but this place setting really makes the horror effect superimposed.
When the camera camera suddenly crawls on the ground and looks up; suddenly rises to the beam of the room, looking down on the crowd, or burrows into the staircase of the basement, close to the wall of the corridor, hiding between the edges of the sheets, like a demon that spies all the time, waiting for the opportunity.
The enclosed building space itself constitutes an inescapable labyrinth, making people breathless in the cramped environment. The heavy sense of oppression is another manifestation of the horror effect.
The Conjuring 3 is not the case, and Chávez always feels that the protagonists should go outside so that he can show his horror techniques in every venue. Examples include the old priest's basement, the federal prison, the boundless forest, and the cold morgue. Greedy and generous, so that in the end there is no impressive place of terror.
The last point is the concept corresponding to the large villa - "home". In Wen Ziren's first two films, Ed and Lorraine actually do not have many superpowers, but Lorraine has yin and yang eyes and can see the past in the underworld that ordinary people can't see.
Therefore, in the end, these two films are the powerful force of family affection, and finally defeat the evil possessive control. However, Wen Ziren does not feel deliberate in dealing with this emotion. Whether it is the redemption between brothers and sisters, or the deep concern of parents for their children, there are a lot of details in the first half of the film.
"The Conjuring 3" is obviously much more flattering and deliberate. The film ends with the help of Ed and Lorraine as a weapon of exorcism and defeating the arch-villain nun.
But at the point of "love", except for the previous clip, Lorraine told the story of her and Ed's first acquaintance, there are almost no solid emotional details. In the end, the film was reduced to an official sugar sprinkling of beans to fans.
In addition, the budget of "The Conjuring 3" has been reduced, from the original theater release to the launch on the HBO MAX streaming platform, a lot of factors have prompted this third part of the canon, downsized to a web drama-level supernatural detective film, which is a pity.
After seeing this situation, we can't help but ask: Where will this "soul-summoning universe" created by Wen Ziren's own hands go in the future?
In fact, the explosion of "Conjuring" in 2013 was not the debut of a fresh theme, but a re-renovation of popular culture.
The character settings, place appearances and exorcism rituals in "The Conjuring" are basically borrowed from the 1973 William Friedkin film "The Exorcist".
"The Exorcist" tells the sad story of a psychology priest who has a deep guilt for his mother, and when he exorcises a little girl who is possessed by a demon, he commits suicide and realizes his own redemption. The film received a total of ten Academy Award nominations that year, which set off a wave of exorcism films.
However, Wen Ziren improved it, especially adding the effective gimmick of "based on real events", and the key was that the famous psychic investigator Lorraine Warren used as an adviser to suddenly bring the "exorcism" that was far away from the ordinary audience suddenly closer, resulting in this eight-year movie-watching frenzy.
With the strong support of Warner Pictures, Wen Ziren, as a producer and general manager, has also created the so-called "Soul Conjuring Universe" since the explosion of "Conjuring", plus the "Conjuring 3", a total of 8 films have been born.
However, except for "The Conjuring" and "Conjuring 2", which Wen Ziren personally directed, the rest of the films were all mediocre in word of mouth, and some were even criticized.
Therefore, many viewers are worried about the future development of the "Conjuring Universe". In fact, from this stage, Warner executives will still extend the evil villains that appear in the series of films one by one, into movies or episodes, until the fans are squeezed out of the last trace of good feelings for the series.
Therefore, we do not have to have any expectations for the "Soul Summoning Universe", under the daily escape order of Wen Ziren, the "hand-throwing treasurer", the reputation will only continue to fall, and it is difficult to turn over.
Thinking about it this way, although "The Conjuring 3" is the worst in the canon series, but thinking of other films in the future "Conjuring Universe", it may be the best one since then, and I don't know!
24th floor cinema Flower no banquet