The “real” case files of paranormal investigator couple Ed and Lorraine Warren (viewed as either magical samaritans or publicity-hungry charlatans, depending on who you believe) have inspired two direct dramatisations thus far (one in Rhode Island and one in Enfield) and provided the jump-off for three films about their devious doll Annabelle (the last of which they cropped up in). One of the films also briefly introduced The Nun who then received her own film while one of the characters from Annabelle also crossed over into The Curse of La Llorona. It’s all as absurdly convoluted and ridiculously overstretched as it sounds, yet the films continue to wear a straight face even in their silliest moments, something that can be seen as both admirable and deluded.

It’s this solemnity that wears a bit thin in the otherwise solidly enjoyable new chapter The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do it, a handsomely made return to form for a series that had been showing signs of fatigue. Delving into their questionable case files once again, this time has the Warrens (played again by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) dealing with one of their most heavily publicised battles with evil. In 1981, the Warrens exorcised a demon from a young boy in Connecticut (shown in a ferociously effective cold open) but during the procedure, it transferred into a local youth who then went on to murder his landlord. The subtitle of the film was his legal defence, a first in US court case history, as the Warrens scrambled to find proof that it was an unholy spirit that led to the killing.

What the film doesn’t detail, while holding the Warrens up as salt of the earth supernatural superheroes, is that during the trial, the pair was promising a book and a lecture tour while their agents were trying to arrange movie rights, before the verdict had even arrived. It doesn’t make them vultures exactly but it does make the heavenly glow accompanying their every move harder to stomach, a little more shading would have gone a long way. The series has always relied on an audience of faith, not just in the truth of what they’re seeing (the words “based on a true story” should be taken with a dump-truckload of salt here once again) but also in Christianity, like many horror films about the fight between good vs evil, it doubles up as both date night rollercoaster ride and unapologetic religious propaganda. It works better here as the former, when it’s not trying to doggedly convince us of its veracity, especially as the story hurtles toward an ending that edges further and further from any charade of the truth.