The Reel Review
In 1981, the Glatzel family of Connecticut was at the center of the first and only U.S. murder trial in which demonic possession was used as the defense. This Netflix crime documentary reveals some shocking details about both the family and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, whose involvement in the case was the basis for a book and subsequent 2021 film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.
Blending interviews with Glatzel family members with reenactments, family photographs and home videos, writer/director Chris Holt paints the story of a dysfunctional family in peril. The film’s first hour, centered on the Warren’s alleged audiotaped evidence of youngest Glatzel son David’s possession, appears to support the claims that Arne Johnson was possessed by the devil when he killed his girlfriend Debbie Glatzel’s landlord/boss, just months after attending David’s exorcism. Their claim: the devil had migrated from David to Arne.
In a very frustrating bait-and-switch maneuver, Holt leaves the most interesting details of the story for the film’s final 15 minutes, when oldest Glatzel son Carl reveals some shocking information about their mother Judy as well as the Warrens, painting the latter as fraudulent con artists taking advantage of a naive and emotionally vulnerable family and exploiting them for financial gain – hardly the venerated portrait of the Warrens in The Conjuring film franchise. This last-minute “a-ha” moment is only partially satisfying, since it raises many more unanswered questions about Debbie’s relationship with her dead landlord/boss and Johnson’s motive. The Devil on Trial is an interesting but sad story, sloppily handled.
REEL FACTS
• Both Arne Johnson and the late Debbie Glatzel worked with producers of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and backed the Warrens’ version of events. Debbie’s brother Carl called the Warrens’ book, “The Devil in Connecticut,” and subsequent film a complete lie based on a phony get-rich scheme in which they paid the Glatzel family only $2000.
• From 1952 to Lorraine’s death in 2019, the Warren’s Occult Museum in the basement of their Monroe, Connecticut, featured artifacts from their many demonic cases.
• The most prevalent item, kept in a glass case in the basement, was the cursed Raggedy Ann doll by the name of Annabelle, made popular in several Conjuring films. Its former owner claimed the doll would mysteriously appear in different rooms of her apartment in disturbingly odd poses, along with brief messages scrawled in red crayon on parchment paper.
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