Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson reveal how The Conjuring horror movies can take a heavy toll

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson reveal how The Conjuring movies can be ‘exhausting and destabilising’ and whether they really believe in things that go bump in the night.

VERA Farmiga has a theory about why audiences pay good money to scare themselves to death by watching The Conjuring movies: suddenly their own lives don’t seem so bad.

“It’s a good adrenaline rush,” she says over Zoom from her Los Angeles home. “What people go through in our films, our own problems pale in comparison.”

Patrick Wilson, who plays her onscreen husband in the horror franchise agrees, adding with a laugh: “You feel alive when you are close to death.”

Wilson and Farmiga play real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in the acclaimed fright fests, created by Australian writer-director James Wan. The first two Conjuring films, based on supposedly true haunted house cases in the US and the UK, made more than $800 million at the box office and spawned an extended universe including a trilogy based on spooky doll Annabelle.

The pair have been menaced by witches’ curses and plagued by demons in their attempts to rid families of the sinister spirits that terrorise them, and Farmiga says there’s a good reason for the breaks between films. Her character is the one most in tune with the supernatural, meaning she’s often sent to investigate shadowy basements and face off with the malevolent entities.

Vera Farmiga in a scene from The Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Do It.

“We do need a few years rest,” she says. “It’s not easy. My brains get scrambled with the amount of screaming I have done in this franchise. I’m emoting – you have to dig deep to play some of these dark tunes. It can be exhausting and destabilising.”

Dark and demonic as the subject matter may be – and each of the films to date has started with a blessing of the production – Wilson says he and Farmiga have a blast working together, and there’s never a dull moment or a sense of just going through the motions.

“In the pursuit of really stretching the genre and the franchise, no day is just showing up and sitting at a table talking,” Wilson says. “It’s always full-on – giving some crazy exorcism or jumping out of something or professing your love. It’s a lot and it’s full bore but that’s why we do it. It’s a real blessing and we are very fortunate.”

The third film, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, moves the series outside of the haunted house setting for the first time and takes its inspiration from a real-life 1981 US murder case, in which lawyers – assisted by Ed and Lorraine Warren – attempted to argue in court that the defendant was not responsible for the crime because of demonic possession. In the actual case, the judge threw out the defence, ruling that it could never be proved and Arne Cheyenne Johnson served five years behind bars for first-degree manslaughter for the killing of his landlord.

The Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Do It is based on a real-life murder case where lawyers tried to use demonic possession as a defence.

True to the franchise formula of course, the film version is far more devilishly dramatic, with visions and curses galore, levitating bodies, reanimated corpses and, yes, another terrifying scene beneath a house (“I did complain about it because there are always these basements that show up,” says Farmiga with a laugh.) Wilson says that although the writers and actors were sensitive to the fact that they were making entertainment from a true tragedy, as in all The Conjuring films, the actual events that inspired them are just jumping off points.

“Yes, a man was murdered and I am a human being and I want to be conscious of the role that I am playing and the story I am telling but any decision to do the film is handled before we even get there so I really just try to sync into what Ed believed,” he says. “I have played good guys, I have played bad guys – but I don’t judge any of them. If I am going to sign up to play it then I am going to make that decision, and that’s what this man believes.”

He does, however believe that the film raises a valid point – that if people in courtrooms around the world are asked to swear on the Bible when giving testimony, why should that not also allow for the existence of the Devil?

“There are always basements”: Vera Farmiga in The Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Do It.

“I think there is some validity to that in thinking that if we are supposed have separation of Church and State, then why are we making every single person go into a courthouse and swear on a Bible?” he says. “Regardless of religion, there is already a mysticism and spirituality that bleeds into the court system and I feel like that’s fascinating to play even if you disagree with me. If I can raise a question or a response or inspire a conversation than great, we have succeeded.”

Both Wilson and Farmiga agree they don’t have to believe the outlandish occurrences that are the mainstay of the Conjuring movies – they just have to believe that their characters do. That said, they are both open to things that go bump in the night, and perhaps more so now than when they began work on the first Conjuring film nearly a decade ago. Each of the films in the series has had unexplained oddities on set, and according to the filmmakers on The Devil Made Me Do It blood mysteriously appeared on Farmiga’s script right after the initial set blessing and she also experienced the same strange bruising on her legs she’d had on the two previous films.

Patrick Wilson, director Michael Chaves and Vera Farmiga on the set of The Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Do It.

“I am open,” Farmiga says, adding that she believes in “positive and negative mysticism”.

“I have experienced so many inexplicable things – even prior to shooting this film – with supernatural occurrences in my life. Nothing too frightening though.”

Wilson says he is more fascinated then frightened by the prospect of the supernatural, and embraces the possibility that the Warrens (Ed died in 2006 at the age of 79 and Lorraine died two years ago, aged 92) may have been operating on “another plane” and could see and feel things that others don’t.

“It doesn’t scare me, it actually interests me and I think it’s cool,” he says. “So, if there’s one thing that the series has taught me, it’s that I am fine with it and I don’t think it’s necessarily negative. If there’s a spirit around, fine. Maybe it’s not a bad spirit. Why does it have to be bad?”

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is open in cinemas from June 3