YourFilmWhore Review of The Conjuring

The Conjuring (2013)

Genre Piece Well Done While Doing Nothing New.

[7/10 · 26 February 2014]

Ah, the often talked about The Conjuring that is supposedly about a "true" story of famous demonologists and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren that even they were too scared of to speak about and let people know about for the longest part. Now, I am not going to debate whether or not if the couple this movie is based on are con-artists, or just got conned themselves, since honestly, this movie has zip to do about Amityville minus a little mention near the end of the film. Really, this movie is about a whole other not-demonic possession that Ed and Lorraine were at and the effects that some spooky crap had on a humble family. Now, if this sounds like you have heard of this story before, well, it is because you have. Honestly, one of the fundamental issues presented to the viewer here really is that they are going to be watching this movie thinking of plenty of other haunted house films, especially The Amityville Horror and trying to see how this film stacks to them but thankfully for this movie, despite treading heavily worn tracks, it does it in a way that is not completely idiotic or hair pulling bad. In fact, the scares in this movie are quite good, and sure, there are your usual jump scares because no horror movie would be complete without them, but the movie does build up some great atmosphere and this could easily be one of the better horror films to have come out in ages...if the script was any better. Now, characters are not complete and utter fools (minus a cop who is in this movie for really no reason as far as I can tell except to have handcuffs near the end just because), but really they are given a bit too much exposition to spout, and it can really annoy anyone who doesn't like being talked down. If I wanted to know the ins and outs of paranormal investigations in the 70s, I will read a book about it instead of watching a movie that is meant to entertain me, not educate. And thanks to this really heavy handed way of telling us what things do, and sometimes whenever there is really nothing going on in parts (Ed and Lorraine disappear for nearly 20 minutes in the middle of the movie to not be heard from till the crap really hits the fan. Nice to know this was "their" story and they are barely featured in it) and you find yourself just really bored with the movie, bam, the plot restarts and you remember why you were bothering for the first quarter of the movie. Because of this, it is hard for me to really recommend this movie at times, especially to those who are like me, starting to grow tired of the old and worn out clichés in horror. Will you hate this utterly after watching it? No, unless horror is just not your thing (which if so, what are you bothering reading my review for? :D ). Now are you going to love this and want to own the about seven different editions that are sure to come out on DVD? Probably not. It is just a bit too bloated and long winded to truly grip, though it is really well done, and can be straight out frightening at times.