Set about a half-decade after the events of The Conjuring 2 and bringing the Warrens into the 1980s, The Devil Made Me Do It begins at a point where most of the films in the series climax: an exorcism. The married paranormal investigators have been trying to help David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), a young boy who has been possessed by a demon, and their work gets approval from the Catholic Church. Things go terribly wrong during the ceremony, however, and Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor), the boyfriend of David’s sister, Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook), invites the evil spirit to enter his body and leave the innocent child alone. Days later, the demon takes control of Arne and the young man winds up killing his landlord (Ronnie Gene Blevins) – a crime for which he is subsequently arrested when cops find him covered in blood and walking down the street in a daze. The state wants to pursue the death penalty for a first degree murder charge, but the Warrens come to his defense knowing that he isn’t responsible for the crime. They successfully convince Arne’s attorney to plead innocent because of demonic possession, the first ever such defense in the history of the United States court system, but then it becomes the investigators’ job to find evidence to support the claim.
