The Conjuring (2013/Theatrical Film Review)

 

 

Stars: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lily Taylor, Ron Livingston

Director: James Wan

Critic's rating: 7 out of 10

 

Review by Randy Leonhard

 

Horror films come in all sizes, big budget ones to little independents, for the most part however horror films can be categorized in three different columns.  Those films that scare the crap out of us, the ones that are just plain crap and the ones that are somewhere in between.  The Conjuring, the newest directorial offering by horror maestro James Wan falls into the third, delivering a film that doesn't ever emerge from the murky, dusty basement of terror, never getting dark enough to amount to anything more than a shining twilight of cheap scares.

 

Wan, best known for the film Saw and the highly under appreciated nerve shattering 2010 film Insidious doesn't quite get to the level of these two of his prior films, but does achieve many good moments of fright throughout and kudos on a various number of technical issues that I found to have worked exceedingly well.

 

Written by Chad and Carey Hayes, twin brothers, both of which are seasoned veterans of the horror genre, tells the true story of paranormalists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) husband and wife whose life long crusade is to battle with all things demonic.  In this particular case though, a story file that was deemed so malevolent, as the opening credits would have one believe, could never be spoken of and locked away until now.  Ed and Lorraine find themselves investigating the haunting of Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) both of whom have just moved, along with their five daughters, into their dream house but slowly turns out to be a hell house of which all their money has been invested in.  They all couldn't be happier at first within their little piece of heaven until things start to go bump in the night, the horror movie token dog is killed by unseen forces and then all hell starts breaking loose.

My issue with The Conjuring is one of confusion and one of skepticism as there are three separate story lines; the Perron's story line being the primary one but then there is the story of a scary clown doll named Annabelle who has a demon attached to it.  The other story line has to do with an exorcism from a prior case the Warrens worked on and Lorraine, who's an intuitive amongst other things, bears witness to something so horrific, something the viewing audience is never given privy of, that spirals her out of control for a while causing Ed to have grave concerns about letting her get too involved with the Perron haunting.  The film tells and references back and forth between all of these elements wanting us to believe they are all intertwined somehow but it never quite glues down the edges of this hodge podge fright flick.

 

My skepticism is that these events are shown recorded as were the other Warren cases in order to get the Catholic Church to haul out the big guns and grant exorcisms for the many demonic hauntings the Warrens seem to stumble onto throughout their lives together.  The problem is, in the closing credits, of which I include in my praise of the film, it being one of the better elements to the film in whole, shows actual pictures of both the real life Warren and Perron families and yet oddly never shows the real life footage so terrifying that it has the church breaking out their archaic big guns, leaving me doubtful of the existence of the footage whatsoever.

 

Within the specter filled frames of The Conjuring, I also felt there were strange allusions to other famous horror films such as the Steven Spielberg-produced Poltergeist (Directed by Tobe Hooper) to The Blair Witch Project and Halloween, even Spielberg's Jaws but I never knew for sure if they really were cleverly placed ghosts littered about or if they were my own person demons wanting to see them there.

 

Either way, this film takes place before The Amityville haunting, of which the Warrens also investigated and of which propelled them to the fame they now have, and the skeptic in me thinks that to have a "real life" haunting such as Amityville in one's paranormal career would be fantastic but multiple ones leave me filled with a deep doubt of authenticity.  Just ask the Sci-Fi/SyFy Channel's Ghost Hunters.  I've seen them say over and over, "What was that!" but "that!" never really seems too be anything more than a mere alley cat.  Like I said, I'm skeptical, but you be your own judge.

 

The great things that director Wan does well though are technical things like the switching between recording mediums from the Hollywood camera's making the movie to the Warren's video camera and mic, which works phenomenally well and a very scary score than lies beneath it all giving the film merit and ultimately worth the cost of admission.

 

The Conjuring tries very hard to conjure up the genie in the bottle that made films like The Exorcist scare the hell out of us, but falls slight short in the end.  The Conjuring does musters up a few scares and jumps but never really leaves any goose bumps.