From director Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, the latest installment of the largest horror franchise in history, is based on one of the most chilling and sensational cases from the files of real-life paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga). Involving a real murder and a real victim, the crime committed by Arne Johnson (Ruairi O'Connor) was the first time in U.S. history that a murder suspect would claim demonic possession as a defense, forcing everyone to look at whether they would even consider such a thing possible.
During a virtual press conference to promote the film, co-stars Farmiga, Wilson and O’Connor were joined by director Chaves, franchise creator James Wan and producer Peter Safran, to talk about why they chose to tell this specific story, what it is about Ed and Lorraine Warren that audiences find so interesting, moving into the 1980s, whether these films allow for improvisation, balancing the truth with fiction, what makes this the darkest Conjuring film yet, and the secret ingredient when it comes to building a successful horror franchise.
Question: With this movie, Ed and Lorraine Warren have left the haunted house and you’re expanding the universe. Michael, of all of the Warren case files, why was this the story that had to be told in this film?
MICHAEL CHAVES: From the very beginning, I spoke with James [Wan] and with Peter [Safran] and with the studio, and for any franchise to be fresh, there needs to be invention and re-invention. We wanted to tell a Conjuring story, but in a way that we haven’t seen before. This is, in a lot of ways, more a supernatural thriller. We’re taking the Warrens on the road. This really is the darkest Conjuring film. When you really look at the case, it’s one of their most controversial cases. The whole thing is just so fascinating.
James, what made you choose Michael Chaves, as the director of this film?
JAMES WAN: Michael and I had worked together on La Llorona, so I saw Michael as a filmmaker on that film and how much he grew through the course of that film. The other really important thing for myself is just that we wanted a filmmaker that would respect what Peter, Patrick [Wilson], Vera and myself did in the first film, and we knew that we wanted a filmmaker that has a vision to take it in a new direction, but yet really respected the world that we had created.
PATRICK WILSON: It’s a tough requirement because you want someone to have their own vision and put their own stamp on it, but in a selfless act. You don’t want a director to come in there and say, “I’m gonna do it so different because it needs to be different. I wanna be different.” We never heard those words and that’s not how Michael operates. The beauty of it was, and it’s not that these words were said, but it was a feeling of, “I have a tremendous amount of respect for the franchise. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what you guys have done.” Because of the way this story is so different and it really lends itself to more of a thriller aspect, with horror being the overwhelming them, it took it into a new place. So, having a new director and a new vision helped it. This was born, years ago, from James having this idea and this story. We knew it was coming – the Arne Johnson case – even before Chaves was brought on. Chaves was such an amazing fit because not only did he have this technical prowess, but the positivity that comes from him, and that should not be taken lightly, and from James and their filmmaking, is something that we all respond to, as actors. We need a group that is working towards same goal. Because it all gets so dark in these films, you want someone that is gonna lean into the love, because love wins in these movies, and lean into the positivity. As dark as this film gets, there’s a whole other lightness to it that Chaves brought.
Despite all of the strange goings, Ed and Lorraine Warren always remain the heart of the Conjuring movies. Patrick and Vera, what do you think it is about them that people find so fascinating?
VERA FARMIGA: I know what I find fascinating, and it’s that they are the personification of love. It is a love story, for me. It is more of a love story than it is a horror story to me, and that’s what makes it so unique and successful. That’s why I enjoy coming back. That message of love, and not only the Warrens for each other, but for the work that they do and for the people that they help, that selflessness, that compassion, that embodiment of love, is really something holy and special. That makes it digestible and beautiful.
WILSON: I always have to go back to the first film and those conversations that James and I had, early on, about the way that the structure of these film was gonna be built, following these different cases and these different families, but really centered around the Warrens and what we’re gonna go through. They become the throughline between all of these films. That’s something that sets us apart from other horror franchises. You’re following the good guys throughout it, instead of the villain. Those conversations that we had, early on, with the first one, we knew we’d get to the scare, but we also knew that we had to build the character and the relationships, whatever it was gonna be. We were already leaning into character and relationship and love and partnership in these movies, and when you know that and you know that you can center around love – and it’s our version of Ed and Lorraine because we don’t know how they were behind closed doors – it frees you up to go as dark as you want in the other aspects because you really get to balance it out. I would say that this film probably has some of the darkest moments of any in the universe, but you also have those moments of deep, profound romance, and we don’t go halfway with either. If you’re gonna have these terrifying scares, then we wanna have the most full of love moments that you can because it does become very operatic.
Ruairi, to play a possessed person, did you use any other characters from other possession movies for reference?
RUAIRI O’CONNOR: It was a huge challenge for me because I’m very scientifically minded and very cynical. I remember talking to Vera on set a lot, and she has this really warm openness to there maybe being some kind of paranormal or something beyond. She just is playful with it and would be talking about little spooky things that happened throughout the filming of The Conjuring and the other films, as well. I was just wishing that I would get some spooky event that would put me in it, but unfortunately, it didn’t, so I worked with my acting coach a lot to dredge up personal demons and stuff like dying of an illness and that kind of thing to really ground it. But then, when I watched the film, I was like a 14-year-old kid watching a movie that I shouldn’t be watching. It was just a horror film, and all of that boring actor work that I put into it, I couldn’t see the mechanics of and I got to enjoy it like the audience and pry my girlfriend’s hands away from her face and force her to watch it A Clockwork Orange style.
For the filmmakers, was there any apprehension about moving into the 1980s? What challenges did that bring to the storytelling?
WAN: When we were filming on the streets of London, it was raining. We were doing the raining shot for the ending of The Conjuring 2, and during a break in photography, I remember going to Patrick and Vera and saying, “You know what, you guys? The next one has to be in the ‘80s.” And Vera said to me, “Yes, I want big earrings!” It felt like the natural progression because we had spent a lot of time in the ‘70s. Ed and Lorraine Warren, their cases and their career went from the ‘60, ‘70s, ‘80s and into the ‘90s. It just felt like the natural progression for us to move into and aesthetically felt like it was the right thing to do. We’d exhausted the ‘70s look, and the ‘80s was the natural way to go. Now, there are a lot of TV shows and movies that are taking place in the ‘80s, but it was naturally where the story and the characters and the period of the story wanted to take us into.
PETER SAFRAN: We’re also driven by the real life case. We try to figure out the story that we wanna tell, and then set it in the appropriate era. Because we don’t, in our films, hit it on the head, what the era is, the movies that we did, they were set in the ‘70s, but it wasn’t the disco ‘70s. The change for Ed and Lorraine, between the ‘70s and the ‘80s, is not so dramatic for us. For us, it really was just staying true to the story.
CHAVES: It was based on the real-life case, and it took place in 1981. The idea of going into a new decade is almost like turning a page into a new chapter. It’s a new chapter in the careers of the Warrens. We’re opening new doors in the franchise of The Conjuring and just exploring different things. During the ‘80s, Lorraine would work with detectives and police departments, and that was something that we haven’t been able to explore before. People forget, but there were actually a lot of psychics and clairvoyants working with police departments, so much so that the Department of Justice actually issued a handbook in 1989 because so many departments were working with psychics. They needed to actually formalize some rules of working with psychics. The other thing in the ‘80s was the dawn of the Satanic Panic. There are a lot of cool textural things that play a backdrop in this movie and it’s fodder for something that could be explored in future cases.
For the cast, did this shoot leave any room for improvisation?
FARMIGA: Where I find the most room in The Conjuring is in between the lines with the stuff that’s unspoken. I also can tell you that this is some of the biggest stuff I’ve ever had to play in my career. It was operatic. It’s epic, the emotional scope of this character. I’ve never had to consider a character’s spiritual prowess. When you’re denouncing demons, that stuff is huge and I don’t necessarily rehearse it. There is so much improvisation that happens within those moments because I’m just grasping at straws. Those big emotional moments simultaneously delight me and scare the crap out of me, having to execute them and do so with earnestness. There’s always room for improv. I don’t think we actually ever veer off book too much. The script is always quite succinct, but I find that, within the framework of these scenes and even in the way that they’ve written Ed and Lorraine, there’s so much room for adding nuance. For me, those moments are largely unspoken.
O’CONNOR: From my point of view, with Patrick and Vera, just seeing other films, I thought that there must be loads of moments that they were probably improving in because they’re so natural and sincere in their relationship. And then, watching the film and seeing all of the scenes I wasn’t involved, I was like, “That’s pretty much read exactly off the page.” It’s always scary having to deliver lines, if they’re gonna feel uncomfortable in your mouth, but it feels very real, that relationship. That’s why I assumed there must be improv there. Just from my own personal position on improv, I agree with Vera that most of the improv takes place in the physical acting and what you’re going through. Thinking of what cool lines you might be able to say probably takes a bit of a backseat.
WILSON: I started out being a theater animal where you’re used to having scripts where the writer has been dead for 500 years, so you don’t think about changing lines. There’s still a little bit of that in me. Also, with respect to Michael and James and Peter and David [Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick], who’s written these scripts, the last thing you wanna do is be like, “All right, you guys have been doing this for a year and a half, but I figured out something over the weekend that you’ve never thought about.” That rarely comes into play. Usually, it’s trying to figure out, if you’re missing a moment, whether you can say something like this. A lot of times, it’s just a little grammatical thing. I like to stick to the script because that gives me a fence to play in. And then, everything else in between, we can figure out. We can figure out blocking on the day and action, and something to do something and play against, but I like the script to be dead on. Also, from a technical standpoint, it gets to be a big mess, if you start ad-libbing something in the wide, and then you’ve gotta stick to it and it’s not great. If I’m changing something on purpose, I’ll usually tell the script supervisor, even before I tell the director, so they know what’s going on. Because it’s not a comedy where you do 15 different versions of a joke to see what lands at a test screening, this is incredibly technical. We do our work, and then they take it and they’ve gotta make it. Making a horror movie is so much more technical than a drama, and I say that as someone that hasn’t even directed one yet, but I know that from my years with these guys. It is so well thought out that it’s our job to over thoverthink and make it look so effortless and easy and like we must have just come up with it on the day, but that’s not true.
For the filmmakers, these films are obviously dramatizations of the Warrens’ case files. How do you stay true to Ed and Lorraine and their work while also delivering the scares and intensity that contemporary audiences expect? Are there any examples throughout the series where you decided to pull back and not do a gag because it went too far from the truth?
SAFRAN: We’re making movies. We base them in the real case files, and then we dramatize them as we see fit, to make the best possible experience for the audience and to tell the best story. It’s very important to us to stay true to the relationship between Ed and Lorraine. We make sure that it’s grounded in that love. And then, in terms of the scare sequences, we can go to places that were not necessarily based on truth, but are just great original sequences that audiences are gonna get excited by. We’ve never pulled back on a scare sequence because it didn’t fit within the fact pattern of what actually happened in the case, but we are always conscious of that relationship between Ed and Lorraine. We would never write anything that Ed and Lorraine wouldn’t do.
CHAVES: Because some people say that we live in a post-truth society, with these stories, I try to anchor it in what the emotional truth is. Our movie opens with this exorcism. We have a recording of it that actually plays over the end credits. Maybe you’re a total skeptic. Maybe you don’t believe in demons or God, or any of that. But you can’t listen to that tape and say that something powerful was not going on there. You can’t listen to it and not connect to the emotion and to the real terror that family was going through. I was raised Catholic. I’m always a skeptic, but always someone who wants to believe. I always go back and forth. Jams always talks about finding and delivering the emotion. If I was gonna say a secret to his success and the success of this franchise, it’s really anchoring it in just pure, powerful emotion.
WAN: People love to be scared. That’s the bottom line. The reason why these movies work as well as they do is that people wanna be scared. People wanna go see a comedy to laugh. If you go see a scary film, you go to scream and cry, and then laugh. What works for The Conjuring films is to start with something that’s real. If you start with that, then you can embellish on it, but you can always come back to that foundation, where it was grounded and real to begin with. People can tell the difference between things that are based on “reality” and something that is just outlandishly made up.
For the actors, what was it like working for you to work with Michael Chaves on this?
WILSON: Everybody is different. The most fun that we have on these movies is when we’re welcoming, in this case, a new director and new actors. We want that. I want people to come in and bring all of their passion and energy and their A-game, and dive in deep. We don’t like to half-ass it on these movies. We whole-ass it. You’ve gotta go full bore. I speak to his passion and reverence for the series, but also his ability to swing a big stick, honestly, and make some choices. Whether they work or not, we don’t know yet. It’s always coming from an organic place of wanting to scare the audience and wanting to make the audience feel something, back to the emotional through-line, and also that ability to pivot and go, “That’s not working, let’s try this.” That takes as much strength, or even more so, to not double down out of fear. It’s about leading with love and not fear, which is a good lesson for us all.
FARMIGA: From the moment I met Chaves, I knew exactly why he was picked. I knew why he was hand-chosen for us. It’s also the crew. A lot of us have been working together for a long time now. He had to fit in with that. I can see why, aside from his technical savvy and his honoring the vision of the movies before, his absolutely adorable, energetic personality fits so beautifully into the mix.
O’CONNOR: I was working for the first time on The Conjuring films, so me and Michael were both coming onto it fresh. It’s definitely intimidating coming into this. It’s such a good series, I didn’t want to ruin it. Michael was really a champion of me, which is incredible. He’s new to this universe and he got me in there, and obviously I’m incredibly thankful for that. He was with me, every step of the way. He’s the only person on set that, at the end of 12 hours of shooting, is still clapping and hollering when you do a take well. As I’m delving into dark places and trying to torture myself, having Michael be behind the camera and making me feel assured was essential. Otherwise, I would have crumbled, for sure.
Michael, what’s the key to your energy?
CHAVES: We work really long days and it’s really stressful. You’re always pushing yourself to the limits. I always just try to remember what a privilege this is, no matter how tired you get. I grew up loving movies, so being a part of this has just been such a pure pleasure and I never wanna forget that. I think it’s important for everybody to be reminded that, especially during this crazy year that we’re coming out of. Any issues that we have are really first-world problems. We’re so lucky to be doing this.
How did the film’s procedural element, as opposed to the classic haunted house sub genre, transform the nature of the horror that we see in this film?
CHAVES: We’ve seen the Warrens in two haunted house movies before, and they’re two of the best haunted house films that we’ve seen. The great thing about a procedural is you are on the road, you’re going into different environments, you’re working with different people, and it’s taking you outside of what really is a comfortable setting. At this point in their careers and in our experience with the Warrens, the haunted house has now become a comfortable setting, so it gives us an opportunity to take them into places that we haven’t seen. What I’m so excited about is that there are sequences in the movie that haven’t been in the trailers, but everybody loves them when they see them and it’s because it is so out of the experience of what we’re used to. I’m honestly so thrilled that they weren’t put in the trailer because there’s a lot of cool, wild stuff in store for fans of this.
The Conjuring films stand as a testament to the loving marriage of Ed and Lorraine. Did being able to fully dig into that aspect in this chapter enhance your understanding of them and their life’s work? Did it lead you to any new discoveries?
WILSON: With all due respect to the real Ed and Lorraine, and I hate to sound so callous, but I see their relationship through the eyes of what we need in the film, meaning I love their unbridled love. I love their devotion to each other, to themselves, and to their religion. So, the progression that we see, because of the previous films, it demands that now. What happens to a couple that just loves each other? What can we do to these guys? I didn’t really get into any understanding of how Ed and Lorraine were. Both Vera and I are happily married with kids and families, so playing a married couple is not the hard part. What’s so wonderful about this Ed and Lorraine that we’ve created, it sounds so romantic, but we’re able to really let it fl and let it go, with their love for each other. There are so many romantic sequences in this movie that you just wouldn’t have, I’d say in any other movie, but you’d have them in a Conjuring movie because James did it in the other ones. It’s so wonderful to be a part of that. Possibly the most romantic moments that I’ve had on screen are with Vera in a horror movie.
WAN: Romantic comedies have a lot less romance.
WILSON: Because then you’re trying to find the edge and make it funny. We have this baseline of deep horror. When the first film came out, it transcended the horror genre. As we get to come back to these guys and really embrace their love, we feel like we can just keep going with that because we know we have this baseline of real horror. Playing the opposites is always fascinating and thrilling.
FARMIGA: If there were any new discoveries for me, in this third one, I think it would be that Lorraine loves Ed, not only for who he is, but who she is when she’s with him. That discovery came about because we get to delve deeper into her gifts and her abilities as a psychic. This time around the nature of their detective work and seeing what they did as demonologists, her ability gets put to the test, her clairvoyancy gets put to the test, and we get to see other aspects of her clairvoyancy and different types of cognition – pre-cognition, retro-cognition, remote viewing. Not only is there telepathy and clairvoyance, but there are other aspects and facets. She’s able to do what she does because she has his support. Diving deeper into her abilities, for me, part of that love is her loving who she is when she’s with him.
Michael, you use imagery of descending downstairs and descending into darkness itself. What was the meaning of that for you?
CHAVES: In terms of the descent, I wanted to send the Warrens to hell and I loved the idea that there would be this feeling of descent through the movie. Without giving anything away, when Ed goes to save Lorraine, there’s the story of Orpheus and the idea of someone descending into the underworld to get their love back. I thought that was really fun, with the continual descent through the movie. The Conjuring movies, from the very beginning, are love letters to the genre. The first Conjuring stands on its own. It’s an amazing horror movie. But then, you can see its inspirations. You can see The Changeling in it, and you can see other movies that are rooted in it. I shamelessly wanted to throw out nods to The Exorcist and there are a couple Psycho nods in there, as well. Just like you’d have Easter eggs within a franchise and nods to other movies, it’s also just a conversation with the genre itself. The Conjuring has honestly so much become the definitive horror franchise.
James and Peter, why do you consider this the darkest movie of The Conjuring trilogy?
SAFRAN: Predominantly because it’s a true story that involves a murder. There’s a real victim in this case. It’s not just a family being terrorized by something unholy. In this case, there was a real murder and a real victim, and inherently that makes this the darkest of the movies. It almost requires the most love from Ed and Lorraine to counteract and to balance that real darkness that exists in the real Arne Johnson case. We were always very sensitive about the fact that there was a real victim in this. There were many victims, but there was really one murder victim in this, and we were always very sensitive to it. That’s probably why it’s the darkest, but also has the most love it.
WAN: I totally agree.
WILSON: I killed a dog and a bird.
James, you have created two iconic horror film franchises with probably more on the way. Is there a secret ingredient or something that you specifically look for, when building a potential horror franchise?
WAN: I don’t think there’s a secret ingredient. For me, I just wanna tell the stories that I wanna tell. I wanna tell the stories that I wanna watch, as an audience. If I had to put my finger on something, it’s telling stories with characters that people can relate to. I believe that’s why, whether it’s Insidious or The Conjuring world with Ed and Lorraine, it’s creating these characters that a really beloved. They’re real people. The more grounded you can make it, the more the horror scenes or the scares you put these characters into, play more fearfully. I think that is the most important ingredient, to let the audience be able to be in the shoes of these characters. Then, you can take them from the craziest, scariest ride.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is in theaters and on HBO Max on June 4.