The Conjuring: Fairly good classical exorcism type horror movie

The Conjuring by James Wan on Blu-ray
My rating: 7 out of 10 stars

In 1971, Carolyn and Roger Perron move their family into a dilapidated Rhode Island farm house and soon strange things start happening around it with escalating nightmarish terror. In desperation, Carolyn contacts the noted paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, to examine the house. What the Warrens discover is a whole area steeped in a satanic haunting that is now targeting the Perron family wherever they go. To stop this evil, the Warrens will have to call upon all their skills and spiritual strength to defeat this spectral menace at its source that threatens to destroy everyone involved.

The Conjuring is a fairly classical horror/haunted house/exorcism movie. That was pretty much what I was hoping for. Slow and creepy build up to a final outburst and confrontation with an evil entity. This is a good movie although it is not really something new in terms of story. It is fairly impossible not to think about, and make comparisons with, The Amityville Horror when seeing this movie. I do not think it really deserves the glowing 9 or 10 star ratings that I have seen but it certainly do not merit those 1 or 2 star ones either. What were these people expecting?

This is a solid effort of making a movie along the classical lines of supernatural possession. As I wrote, it is not really something new, but it is nice to see a new movie using this kind of story without just turning it into a CGI gore-feast. Sure, the movie also includes the traditional pitfalls that most horror movies apparently must have like people thinking it is a good idea to walk down into the dark and scary basement all alone in the middle of the night.

One thing that irked me with the movie though was the idea of phantoms and performing exorcism being presented as kind of normal and accepted things. If the movie would have played itself out 70 or so years earlier maybe but in the 1970’s? It just felt somewhat surreal to see this “ghosthunter” make presentations and talk to people like supernatural entities and the practice of exorcism was just things that happened.

Then we have the ending of course. Not that it was overly bad but christ, if you are going to do an exorcism then do it damn it. Do not stop the procedure and look lost every time something goes bump.

Anyway, I was not sure whether I was going to be disappointed or pleased when sitting down to watch this movie. On the whole I was pleased. It was a nice to watch a movie that was going back to the traditional values in horror movie making and it was as well implemented as one could expect.