The Conjuring

I never quite got the concept of inviting a girl over to “watch a movie”. I mean, I know that a quarter of the way in you’re supposed to say screw it and just start hooking up, but for some reason I don’t work that way. I actually want to watch the movie, so much so that I don’t even get up to go pee for the fear of missing something cool. What can be cooler than a pair of nice boobs you ask? Good question; but for some reason that doesn’t occur to me until after the credits are rolling and by then it’s too late! Girls more often than not just get up and leave my place really frustrated and confused. Well I figured that it was time to start a new trend, and what better way to do it than with a scary movie? I had it all planned out; I was going to wait for The Conjuring to come out on DVD and invite some little cutie over to watch it just so I could do work. But once Hollywood decided to only release R.I.P.D. and Red 2 this weekend, I was stuck with nothing else to see at the theater but James Wan’s new horror flick. And boy am I glad that I actually saw it in the theater rather than in my home because it would have ended up being another failed experiment for this poor clown..

The latest trend in the horror game is to spend 30 minutes wasting your time with pointless and boring set up while giving you fake scares with random pets or annoying kids being the real reason behind the strange noises you are hearing. Well thankfully Wan doesn’t waste any time getting right to it. He scares the hell out of you in the opening scene when he shows his demon hunters interviewing these college girls who are being haunted by an evil doll. Lucky for us the doll doesn’t talk like Chucky but it does do some pretty freaky things and it allows Wan to break out his first bag of tricks. With the exception of gore, Wan pulls from almost every sub genre that exists in the horror industry.  He starts off using Paranormal Activity tactics with subtle bangings or moderate contact in the middle of the night but then eventually graduates to exorcisms, levitation, and brutal interactions between the demons and poor Ron Livingston’s family.  He doesn’t have to rely on the score or use any real camera tricks to scare you either, there are a few scenes where he films the scene upside down but that is when he is showing you what’s happening from the character’s viewpoint.  

The basic premise of the story is, Ron Livingstone (Office Space) moves his family out to the country in a house they bought blindly from a bank auction.  And on the very first day when his young daughter discovers a left behind jack in the Box toy, weird things begin to happen. It starts off with subtle contact at first but with each random opening and slamming of a door or the possible sight of something, things start to escalate to a point to where lives are in danger. There is one particular scene where Livingston goes on the road for work, leaving his wife and children alone for the night and this is when all hell breaks loose. The scene just goes on and on and it feels like the mayhem will never end.

This is when his family decides to reach out to Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who investigate these matters on behalf of the Catholic church. They have a history of discovering the causes of these occurrences and even teach a class on it at the local university. The cool thing is that when they get involved, Wan decided takes it up yet another notch.  The acting in this movie is solid from everyone that is involved and you are legitimately scared throughout the entire movie. And it helps that each actor is portraying someone that actually exists or has existed in the past, so the events are loosely based off of a true story. Let’s just say that I will never play blindfolded hide and seek again under any circumstances! All you need to know is that by the end of the movie, a guy stands up in the middle of the theater and yells “I’m going to church right now!!!’

Well said sir, well said. I rate this movie as TIGHT and definitely suggest that you go see it.