The Conjuring (2013)

I have often wondered what part of the human brain enjoys being scared. Such a mechanism must exist, as evidenced by all the teenagers who always show up to screenings of horror movies, gasping and shrieking throughout, proclaiming afterwards that they will never sleep again. I think it has something to do with a cheap, carnival-esque thrill factor. Ghost movies are like those old-fashioned haunted house attractions. You know what’s going to happen and you know it’s all quite fake, but you jump anyway and laugh about it afterwards. This is the kind of old-fashioned appeal James Wan’s new movie The Conjuring possesses. It concerns a family who moves into a secluded house (of course), wherein also resides the evil spirit of a former witch (of course). Only slightly strange things happen at first. All the clocks stop at 3:07 AM and a young girl may or may not see something or someone in the shadows behind her bedroom door. When things start getting more violent, a demonologist (Yes, that is a thing.) husband wife team played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga show up to work their magic.

I am glad James Wan has given up the guts and gore practices of the Saw franchise he created, in favor of more atmospheric work like this and his last movie Insidious. Like that flick, most of the scares derive from everyday objects and locations. Creepy dolls are always good for a shiver or two (see The Twilight Zone) and mirrors are used very effectively here. That’s one thing that always used to scare me when I was younger: the idea that something other than myself would appear in the reflection. Wan directs with masterful suspense, at least as far as “in the moment” scares are concerned. He makes up for the lack of long-lasting scares by presenting what he has with the utmost sincerity. Any movie containing an exorcism scene must inevitably be compared to that masterpiece The Exorcist, but few movies have the same kind of cold realism. However, I can’t help but scoff at The Conjuring’s insistence on being based on fact. What specter would really spend all it’s time playing spooky hide and seek games?

The film uses its location to great effect. It wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if it took place in a modern, well-lit house with one story and five rooms. With a movie like this, timing is everything. Anybody who’s seen at least a couple haunted house movies pretty much knows what to expect, and there are numerous unavoidable clues that these films provide for when terrifying things will happen. Most of the frightening scenes in this movie use these cues we’re all familiar with, but an effort is made to surprise whenever possible. There are more cases than you might think in which ominous music is followed by terribly drawn-out silences. These instances of nothing happening when you know something eventually will are scarier than the actual outcome of makeup-drenched creepies flying in your face.

The one thing thriller naysayers always complain about is how stupid the characters are when faced with such horrible supernatural occurrences. I must warn you there’s a lot of that in this movie. I know that if an apparition manifested itself in front of me, displayed its slit wrists and groaned, “Look what she made me do!” I hope I would be bright enough not to follow it around the corner. Nevertheless, it is a fact that if these horror movie characters weren’t stupid, there would be no opportunity for scary things to happen. It is also true that the viewers themselves were stupid enough to walk into a movie that they knew full well would scare the willies out of them. I confess that I did not find The Conjuring all that frightening, but I can certainly understand why others do. I appreciated its eeriness more than its alarming jolts, but they both have a place in the film’s overall success. All I can add now is…

BOO!!!

7/10