Lorraine Warren: Vera Farmiga
Roger Perron: Ron Livingston
Carolyn Perron: Lili Taylor
Andrea: Shanely Caswell
Nancy: Haley McFarlane
Christine: Joey King
Cindy: Mackenzie Foy
April: Kyla Deaver
Warner Bros. and New Line
Cinema present a film directed by James Wan. Written by Chad Hayes & Carey
W. Hayes. Running time: 112 min. Rated R (for sequences of disturbing violence
and terror).
I have to get something out
of my system before I really get into this review. In the opening scene, the
demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, are interviewing two women. A man sits
next to the women. It is never stated who he is or why he is there. He is not
involved in the incident the two women describe. Who is this man? What is he
doing there? Was something cut from the scene? Did I miss something? Why is his
presence never explained? And no, he’s not a ghost. He sits there as the women describe their supernatural experience. I thought maybe their experience was a
fraud and he was manipulating the doll they claimed was possessed. But it
wasn’t him. He didn’t do it. He never says a word. Why is he there?!!!! This is
maddening.
There is a sense in watching
“The Conjuring” that the people who made it watched a lot of similar movies.
Not only is the story the same as about ten other films that come almost
instantly to mind, but also there are moments in the film when it seems like
the filmmakers are just going through the paces of what they’ve seen before in
other movies. The details are almost the same, even when they shouldn’t be. “The
Conjuring” is scary, but it’s far from original.
We are introduced to Ed and
Lorraine Warren. The Warrens are real people who were best known for their
involvement with the real life events upon which the film and book “The
Amityville Horror” was based. Ed and Lorraine were paranormal investigators and
lecturers. Lorraine professed to be clairvoyant and worked closely with her
husband on cases. One such case involved the Perron family and is so similar to
the Amityville case; it’s hard not to wonder how much that had to do with the
constant between the two cases, the Warrens.
This film is about the
Perron case. Up until the final moments, it could just stand in as the second
remake of “The Amityville Horror”, complete with the old white two and half
story house on the lake, the period costumes, the family dog that is more aware
that something is not right than the people, the brooding husband, the creepy
basement, and the supernatural events occurring just after 3 a.m. every night.
Punctuality is such an admirable trait in ghosts and demons. One difference is
the fact that the Perrons are a family of seven. Roger and Carolyn are the
parents of five girls. That’s a lot of estrogen. From what I understand about
women, with six against one, their nights in that house would’ve ended at the
first occurrence of something strange.
Despite my criticisms, “The
Conjuring” is scary. The writers, Chad and Carey Hayes (“The Reaping”), create
a device through which the entity will eventually make contact with the family
in the form of a hide and seek type of game where one person is blindfolded and
stumbles about in search of the others who have to clap when they are called
out to do so. This makes for one of the biggest scares of the film, which
unfortunately has been ruined to some degree by the advertizing campaign. It’s
used in a couple of other instances, however, with a nice disturbing effect.
Director James Wan continues
to display a great skill at manipulating sound to terrifying effect. Wan’s use
of sound made his last horror film, “Insidious”, one of the scariest of 2010.
Here the sound effects are subtler, which doesn’t mean that they are at all
subtle. Silence and darkness are considerable tools for Wan. There are some
scenes where all you can see is a person’s face and no surroundings at all. You
keep waiting for something to show up in the background. With the amount of
banging and knocking that take place in this house, it’s a wonder why the
Perrons didn’t run right out and buy a hi-fidelity stereo system to drown it
out.
There are other
horror/haunted house elements that seem to be here because the filmmakers think
they’re supposed to be, or because this story always has them. With a force as
formidable as the one being dealt with here, what could boarding up the cellar
without even fastening the boards down with nails possibly accomplish? There’s
a scene when the invisible entity starts to attack everyone in the household.
One person is dragged around a room by her hair until someone grabs some
scissors and cuts off the end being grabbed by an invisible hand. Do such
physical laws mean anything to such a force? Details like this bring me out of
the created reality of the movie by making me question the logic of the
supernatural ideals on display. It might look neat, but does it make any sense
in terms of the use of this power?
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