[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.]It’s time to get to know directorMichael Chaveson the latest episode ofCollider’s The Witching Hour! After making his feature directorial debut withThe Curse of La Lloronain 2019, Chaves went on to score a significant sophomore film - the third installment of the main series of films inThe Conjuringfranchise.
InThe Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick WilsonandVera Farmiga) swoop in to help David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) and Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor). After exorcising a demon from young David, the entity makes its way into Arne, compelling him to kill. (Or so they think.) When Arne is arrested for murder, it’s up to Ed and Lorraine to prove his innocence in court by confirming the devil made him do it.
While on The Witching Hour, Chaves detailed his ambitions as a young filmmaker and his journey toThe Conjuring 3. But of course, we also had to take it a step further and launch into a spoiler-filled discussion of the new movie.The Devil Made Me DoIt is a unique installment of the series. Not only does it do away with the traditional haunted house format in favor of a mystery story, but it also doesn’t feature a supernatural evil entity as the big bad, rather a human antagonist. The guilty party inThe Conjuring: The Devil Made Me DoIt is actually an occultist (Eugenie Bondurant) who uses a witch’s totem to curse Arne.
Not having an evil entity along the lines of Bathsheba and Valak certainly setsThe Devil Made Me DoIt apart from all otherConjuringfilms, but during our chat with Chaves, he revealed that actually almost wasn’t the case. While discussing the value of test screenings, Chaves revealed that initially, the plan was to include a traditional demon. That portion of the conversation began with Chaves giving a broad sense of the results of the test screenings for the film:
“It has gotten a great response and it has from the very beginning. And I think a lot of that, honestly, is due to the world that James set up and the characters of the Warrens. I think especially after this crazy year that we’ve had, everybody just wants to come back and have some comfort food. I think the relationship the Warrens have with each other and our relationship to them, I think that there is something that is kind of nourishing about that.”
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From there, Chaves homed in on the biggest takeaway from those screenings - their demon wasn’t working:
“In terms of the testing, the biggest thing that we changed was there was a demon that was not working, and it was very similar to the situation in Conjuring 2. I don’t know how much you guys know about it, but Valak The Nun was not The Nun. The Nun was a creation in additional photography.”
Chaves speaks the truth! While editingThe Conjuring 2,James Wandecidedto replace his original horned demon with something that didn’t feel “too out of left-field for the film” and instead felt “more grounded and personal — something that would take Lorraine’s faith and attempt to test/corrupt it.” During addition photography, Wan and co. replaced that horned demon with the now iconic nun.
In Chaves’ case, his alteration was fueled by the fact that becauseThe Devil Made Me DoIt was more of a detective story, it needed a clearer resolution:
“This is a very different Conjuring movie. We’re taking a big swing and the idea with it is that it would be a departure. It’s not gonna be the typical haunted house movie that has been done and really incredibly well explored by the previous two movies, but also all the spin-offs. That’s definitely been their format, so James and the studio wanted to get back to the roots of paranormal investigators and that was something that always appealed to me when I first saw The Conjuring and so this is more a detective story and it was more a story that was gonna be complicated and needed some mystery and needed to go on the road, and needed some kind of clarity in the resolution.”
Chaves further explained by usingThe Conjuring 2as an example:
“If you look at the other movies, sometimes the connections between the demons and how the demons exist, it’s loose, but you buy it because it’s within the confines of a haunted house. Why does The Crooked Man exist with The Nun exists with the old man? They’re different forms of one and it kind of is singular and it takes the shape of this one haunted house experience. I think once you start going out into the world and you’re creating more of a mystery, those old rules of we can have a variety of different demons and creatures starts to get tested.”
So while Chaves and his team did develop a demon they were very happy with, one that was right in line with the entity the real David and Arne described, the testing convinced Chaves it was a necessity to remove it:
“When we were testing it, I think that that’s really what we found out is that you want the movie to kind of come to a resolution and come to a focus and come with an easy explanation that makes sense. The demon that we had was awesome and interesting and true to life, true to the accounts both of David Glatzel and Arne. They both described this creature that was haunting them. But it just didn’t fit in the movie. It was just too complicated.”
If you’re looking for more from Chaves onThe Conjuring 3, filming the music video for “Bury A Friend” withBillie Eilishand so much more more, be sure to catch his full Witching Hour interview at the top of this article!
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