Horror movies have started to rely more and more on CGI to bring the scares. This has made the work easier for actors, who have less gory prosthetics and practical special effects to deal with. But the genre can still make severe demands on an actor on occasion. Ruairi O'Connor plays Arne Johnson in the recently released The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. In an interview with ComicBook.com, O'Connor admitted that shooting the scenes where his character suffers demonic possession and is tied down resulted in serious damage to his body.

"I think the most salient part now, or the bit I'm probably dealing with most with my therapist is probably the physical demands [of the role]. Like I was tied to that bed, or handcuffed to the bed for four days. We actually did two shootings of handcuffed bed scenes, so I had to thrash about ... my forearms are very skinny and slight normally, but they were huge, they looked like I'd been at the gym for 10 years on steroids."

"But it was just swelling. And then the tears become real and the screams become real, and you're just so thankful, because it's so much easier when there is a visceral thing to respond to. But it was a lot of icing of the wrists after to bring them back to a normal size, or a slightly less than normal size, I guess, as is my normal forearm size."

In The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, famed psychic experts Ed and Lorraine Warren are called in to help with the case of O'Connor's character Arne Johnson, who was the first man in U.S. history to claim demonic possession as an excuse for the murder he committed.

Naturally, once Ed and Lorraine get involved, the case turns out to be more complicated than it initially appears. "You have all of the scares and terror that you'd expect from a Conjuring film," the director of the film, Michael Chaves explained in a previous interview. "but it's set against this really incredible mystery. It's a mystery that's tied into what the Conjuring universe is all about."

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It breaks from the tradition established by previous films in the series in the sense that it does not revolve around a haunted house that Ed and Lorraine are called in to investigate. Instead, they must follow the trial of Arne Johnson and try to piece together the truth of the matter while dealing with government officials who do not believe in the existence of the paranormal.

Early reviews for the movie have been largely positive, with critics praising the performances of the lead actors and the new demonic lore that the film adds to the Conjuring universe. Directed by Michael Chaves, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It stars Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ruairi O'Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook, and Julian Hilliard. The film arrives in theaters and on HBO Max June 4. This news originated at ComicBook.com