The Conjuring (2013) Review

In 1971, married couple Carolyn and Roger Perron move into a new home in Rhode Island. Along with their five daughters, the family settle in well enough on the first day, but things go sour rather quickly. Several strange instances occur which lead the family to believe that the residence may be haunted by spirits, and they make the decision to contact paranormal researchers Ed & Lorraine Warren for help.

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, but the state of paranormal horror films is in a bit of a conundrum at the moment. It seems like the reliance upon cheap scares has replaced good tension, characters have been getting progressively stupider and harder to relate to, and the insistency to crowbar in scenes of extreme violence from time to time seems rather unnecessary. I'm not going to name specific pictures (as I'm still adhering to my promise from the last review I did), but you can guess what I'm referring to. Add to that my mixed feelings on director James Wan's body of work prior to the release of The Conjuring, and you can understand why I may have been cautious of a viewing that would cost more than a single dollar or two. I never thought he had a proper understanding of what makes a truly scary ghost story.

I, however, would like to present my hat to Mr. Wan, before I promptly eat it. Or something like that.

Perhaps what really drove me to like this picture as much as I did is in relation to the paragraph above. The film does so much with so little, and I think Mr. Wan may be slowly turning into an honest-to-god good horror filmmaker. The scares in The Conjuring are very much based in the old ghost and demonic stories from back in the glory days of horror. I could spot nods to films like The Exorcist and The Changeling fairly easily, but most of what makes this film work isn't just similarities, but simple things like camera work, proper place of music, and a story that, while somewhat predictable in what is sure to come, still keeps your eyes glued to the screen and creeps you out more than most films released in theaters.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have good chemistry with one another, and if you had told me they were based on a real-life couple, you could have genuinely shocked me. The fact that this case is "based on" true events does merit some investigation, but I'm willing to throw my skepticism to the side and just try to enjoy the film. I honestly couldn't recognize Ron Livingston at first, given that I haven't seen him in anything of note in at least.......five years? Perhaps even more, if you don't count straight-to-DVD pictures. It pains me to say that he was the weakest link in the cast, though it may be unfair considering his tormented wife is excellently played by Lily Taylor, and he suffers in comparison to her. It is easy to get somewhat lost by the fact that this couple has five daughters, and alas, not all of them receive an equal amount of screen time. True, this was the case of the story behind the film, but I'd personally sacrifice one or two underdeveloped daughters in favor of one that had more character.

The Conjuring's body count is shockingly low, as is the actual blood that is shed throughout its near two hour running time (why this earned an "R" rating is baffling to me), but the sign of true strength in a horror film, especially one that deals with the subjects brought up here, is that you don't need those in order to create great atmosphere and in order to scare the audience and make them jump. There's even a scene midway through the picture that answers the age old question of "Why don't you just move out of the haunted area?," something which has always drove me a little bonkers. Sadly, a large portion of the story's more interesting developments were spoiled by its own trailers, so if you have seen little-to-nothing in terms of promotion for this film, that may benefit your viewing experience.

I know a lot of people were very high on Wan's Insidious, but I believe this blows it out of the water in every way, shape, and form. Though Evil Dead still holds the spot for my personal favorite horror film released in 2013 (so far), I may have more respect for The Conjuring, solely because of being able to not just make a known hater of "Ghost Investigation" material like me intrigued by a case that is over forty years old, but for attempting to remind audiences of when and why these stories have frightened many generations' worth of human beings.