The Conjuring (2013) Directed by James Wan
Possession movies seem to be a dime a dozen these days and very few are even worth watching. In the early 2010’s we got a couple good, solid entries in the genre the first was 2010’s Insidious. The second was the Conjuring. This was my second time watching this movie, the first time I wasn’t really in the state of mind to watch it, but since I rented it I felt I needed to and ended up being bored with it. I found it at Meijer (for those of you from different sates, Meijer is a Michigan brand store in the vein of Walmart) for $4.99 so I figured I would give it a second chance.
My second time watching this was much more enjoyable I picked up on a lot more of the story and some of the scenes I missed. Possession movies usually aren’t my thing, very few do I even enjoy. This movie provided some genuinely creepy moments and had a good backstory on why the mother became possessed. Another thing I enjoyed was that this wasn’t shaky cam aka found footage. I am so burned out on those damn found footage movies. VHS & VHS2 I think mastered it so lets move on to something new please!
The Conjuring tells the story of a family that moves into a new house and strange paranormal things start happening. They get the help of paranormal investigators Ed and Loraine Warren. From there it is all about the battle of the Warrens and the entity that has possessed the mother and trying to piece together the story of the former owners. The house is a late 1800s plantation style building with a big plot of land. The owners find a sealed off cellar and that’s when the weirdness begins. I wont give away any more of this movie.
This was one of those situations where a second viewing in the right state of mind increased my thoughts on the movie. The first time I was rather bored and distracted. This time I was engaged and found the story very interesting. Of course there are a few things I didn’t like, such as the small side story with Annabelle the doll. If you want to know my views on Annabelle the movie, I reviewed it last year so check it out! The atmosphere and feeling of the movie is on par with the best movies of the genre such as The Exorcist and Insidious. The acting is pretty decent, I mean child actors are usually quite terrible but I never hold it against them, they’re young but even the kids are competent. The special effects are pretty good, I mean there isn’t much in the way of gore and blood but the exorcism scene is effective and believable. If you haven’t seen this, give it a look it’s a truly scary movie and has many creepy scenes. I would give The Conjuring a B+, it is a very good movie but not great. Like I mentioned earlier the side story with Annabelle is only there to make the Annabelle movie and really doesn’t help the rest of the story, its basically just distracting.
