Though I don't scare easy, a few years back
director James Wan tapped into one of my few fears with his
movie 'Dead Silence' and the completely demonic ventriloquist
dummy. Not just the dummy in that movie, but all of
them. Every last one of them. Apparently I am one
of the few people that actually liked that movie, but 'Dead
Silence' might've been the last time I was semi-freaked out
watching a horror movie. His follow up
'Insidious'… eh… not so much. Ah, but now we have Mr.
Wan's latest film 'The Conjuring', a movie that takes place in
the early seventies, which I think was a pretty scary time
considering the clothes and President Nixon, and this is a
movie that opens with what looks to be a demonic ventriloquist
dummy. I hate those things. I gotta say, at least
for the first two acts, 'The Conjuring' was fairly
unnerving. The third act… eh… not so much.
Lorraine Warren, as played by the beautiful Vera Farmiga and
Ed Warren as played by the beautiful Patrick Wilson, are a
pair of paranormal investigators trying to figure out why a
demonic doll is terrorizing some 1960's college kids.
Seems like a demon has latched onto the doll, with its
ultimate goal, I think, possessing one of the college kids and
then causing a ruckus. I not sure why demons inhabit
people and then start spitting bile and stuff. I'm sure
there are other, more viable things one can do when one
possesses a human, outside of spitting bile and spinning ones
head around. Regardless, The Warren's subdue this demon
and take the doll to their Warehouse 13 styled basement where
they keep all of their evil, possessed trinkets.
Fast forward a few years where the Warren's have had a lovely
daughter in Judy (Sterling Jerins) and are still doing their
Paranormal Investigations, though they've had to scale it back
to due Lorraine having a real bad experience during an
exorcism that went terribly wrong. But unfortunately for
the Warren's, their skills… all of them… will be required for
what they are about to experience.
Say hello the Perron's and their five
daughters. Roger (Ron Livingston) is a truck driver and
Carolyn (Lili Taylor) is a homemaker and they have just
brought an old country home in the middle of nowhere. It
was a killer deal. We know there's trouble on day one
when daisy the dog refused to go in the house. She knows
what's up. Trouble was guaranteed when they discovered
they had a basement that was boarded up. Why would
anyone board up a perfectly good basement? Why indeed.
It doesn't take long for the weirdness to start
happening. The clocks stopping at 3:07 in the morning
every day, Carolyn waking up with bruises, the youngest
daughter finding an imaginary friend, which is NEVER a good
thing in a horror movie, and the other daughters experiencing
all kinds of odd phenomena. By the time Carolyn was
terrorized in that basement and the oldest daughter was
getting choked out by something or another, it's time to call
in the experts.
Lorraine has the gift of paranormal sense, and it takes all
two seconds for her to figure out that the Perron's are
screwed in this house. And we've seen enough of these
movies to realize that you just can't move out because the
evil is now with you. The Warren's haven't figured out
what's going on, but just know it's bad, and that Exorcism is
the only cure. But this demon has no interest in going
anywhere, and it really wants to murder some little
girls. Even the Warren's little girl, if it can.
And Lorraine is no condition to do this exorcism. It's
not looking good because the possession is in full effect,
lives are in danger, and black bile is spitting up en
masse. I still don't get that.
It seems to me that James Wan has tricked them all. This
guy practically co-invented torture horror with 'Saw', which
in a sense has essentially become horror in the modern age,
but he doesn't do that anymore. He's gone back to the
good old days of dark lighting, things hiding in closets and
under beds, and things which may or may not jump out to scare
the beejeebus out of you. And the trick, to a modern
audience accustomed to watching body parts mutilated and
having this called 'horror', is that this 'new' approach feels
fresh, when it's anything but. Trust me when I tell you
that there is nothing new or original or cutting edge about
'The Conjuring' as it is about as standard a haunted house /
possession movie as you are going to see, but it does possess
a wealth of talent in front, and behind the camera which still
makes it worthwhile.
No doubt, Wan knows what he's doing when it comes to setting
up his jump scares. And while we've seen it before, it's
still effective, basically because sometimes the scare just
doesn't come, which keeps us on our toes. We do enjoy
stupid people in horror movies, those who look under beds,
completely fearful that a monster might under it. Would
I do that? Oh no. Would I track down a weird sound
in the basement, knowing that everybody I know to be human in
this house is upstairs asleep? No I wouldn't. If I
see a ghostly apparition walk past the door in the dead of
night, am I going to follow it and try to interrogate
it? No I am not. But the first two thirds of
'The Conjuring' was about as effective as conveying unseen
dread and fright as any movie I've recently seen.
The conclusion, while not terrible by any stretch, just
stopped being scary and turned into a demon possession action
movie. Is there another way this could've been
handled? I don't know, I'm not a filmmaker, but dread
was replaced by thrills and the thrills just weren't there for
me.
That being said, 'The Conjuring' was still some effective old
school horror, taking place in the seventies, when this kind
of thing was common in the seventies. With the added
bonus of a possessed evil ventriloquist dummy. I hate
those things.
