I’ve never been a fan of the “based on true events” horror films. We know it’s either fake or glamorised beyond belief. For level-headed people, you can’t help but go in to the film feeling skeptical, and for the people who genuinely believe the events of the film to be an exact truth, well, poor you!
Once again we have one of these examples with The Conjuring – seriously how many exorcism films based on true stories are there now, surely by now the world would be aware if there were that many demons and all that jazz among us. Nevertheless, I gave it ago in the hope that it would live up to all the promise and the film wouldn’t actually push the “based on true events” too much – luckily, and pleasantly, it didn’t!
The film is about the Warrens, Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga), who are two paranormal investigators. The husband and wife duo, while experienced in their field, also acknowledge a lot of what people experienced as hauntings could easily be explained away. Only once have they had a troublesome exorcism which resulted in Lorraine seeing something so horrific it still haunts her to this day.
When the Perrons, headed by daddy Roger (Ron Livingston) and momma Carolyn (Lili Taylor) move into a new house, they start experience tormenting hauntings almost every night, sometimes quite small and creepy, other times quite horrifying and unsettling. They approach the Warrens for help and they realize what is going on in the Perron household is quite real and quite dangerous. It’s up to the Warrens to try and keep the Perrons safe just long enough for a priest to come and perform an exorcism, but as the demonic spirits become more volatile the situation becomes ever more dangerous.
The Conjuring is a slow burning film taking about half an hour to really get going. It’s far from the yells of being a throw back to classic horrors. Relying sometimes on cheap scares and loud noises – the typical formula of the modern day ghost horror that startles rather than terrifies, but there are some genuinely creepy and ‘wtf’ moments in there too and, I’ll admit, a couple of moments that made me yelp – yep, yelp – which is always the sign of a good horror. The problem with The Conjuring is after a couple of creepy moments that happen, it all then stops and the mood lightens up for about 10 minutes, some jokes are made and you never want to see that in a horror film, you want to see a film like The Strangers, that keeps building and keeps building until you can’t look at the screen anymore, but can’t look away either. Horror films are always best when they get scary and continue down that dark and terrifying path. Modern films such as The Conjuring tend to break it up far too much to ever be considered a timeless classic.
The Conjuring wasn’t a horrendous film. There’s certainly been worse and it had nice little touches such as the near fearless nature of Ed and Lorraine up until when they get out of their comfort zone and the way the film doesn’treveal everything, not all the answers are given – then again this just sets up for the sequel we’re getting. A particular good moment was when the Warrens head into the basement with their classic home movie camera, it was a nice touch and made the film quite creepy with the old style camera.
Rating: Far from ‘the classic’ it was dubbed, but still a good modern horror (6/10).
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