"Being possessed is like stepping in chewing gum."
The Conjuring (2013) is a critically acclaimed recent horror film directed by James Wan. The story follows the Perron family who are leaving the city life and moving into an old, large farmhouse in 1971. When strange and supernatural things start happening to select members of the family they seek advice from The Warrens, a husband-wife team of paranormal investigators who decide there is something very wrong with this farmhouse.
The movie does a really good thing where it doesn't show you any real manifestations of the ghost haunting the farmhouse till about halfway through the film. This really does well to echo the Perron family's feelings of weariness in the first half and the supernatural events build in a really nice way so that they start off as things that could not be supernatural at all, and then build to things that are harder and harder to ignore. After the halfway point they revel the awful looking witch though and it's pretty much downhill from there, after that point the movie can't stop showing you all the ghost people that live in the house! And the witch reveal is hilarious, even though I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be int he slightest.
The big downfall of this movie is that it's story just isn't that interesting. There's nothing original about this premise, but the film tries to make up for that by spinning the plot as this overly complicated mess of different storylines involving creepy demon dolls, Satanic witches, ghosts and Catholic possession. All of which gets explained too simply in a whole lot of exposition. It really doesn't feel like any of these elements actually pay off in the end. At some point you realize the movie is pretty much a less well done version of The Exorcist (1973) down to the third act being a "risky" exorcism done by our protagonist. At least in The Exorcist there's an awesomely chilling ending, this movie couldn't even muster that.
Another problem with this movie is it has way too many characters, or at least doesn't effectively use any of the ones it has. I think the one character I actually remotely cared about was Lorraine Warren, and I think that has more to do with Vera Farmiga's performance than anything that's actually on the page. And what was the point of bringing in The Warrens less-good demon hunting buddies the skeptic cop, and the know-it-all Asian kid? Oh, right. Sequels.
The writing is really atrocious, lots of long exposition to explain things that are either convenient for the movie or pretty common knowledge already (if you've ever seen a horror film in your life). The dialogue is down right horrible: "Being possessed is like stepping in chewing gum; it sticks with you." This is one of the funniest lines I've heard in a long time and I'm pretty sure it wasn't mean to be.
And like most movies these days, this film suffers from an overuse of CG. How hard is it to make a sheet fly through the air or a crucifix fall over? I mean really. When you use CG to do these simple things they stick out to the human eye and are SO distracting. Talk about wasting money.
The film has a truly amazing direction. James Wan knows what he is doing and knows how to scare an audience. There's a couple of legitimately frightening scenes in this movie (the clapping scenes) that make the whole movie worth seeing. They're executed with perfect cinematography and great use of sound to make for a perfectly creepy moment, bravo.
I'm legitimately surprised that people liked this movie as much as I heard they did. Sure the scares are good but when the story lacks, I really can't forgive that. And so much of this movie feels like something you've seen before.
2.5/5 Stars.
Happy watching!
Check out what my good friend Daimeon thought of the film here. The 31 Nights of Macabre Movies is just beginning, we continue tomorrow with the classic Satanic horror film, The Mask of Satan (1960).
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