Annabelle Comes Home

Dolly Go Lightly

Annabelle Comes Home
USA 2019 Directed by Gary Dauberman
UK cinema release print

Annabelle Comes Home is the seventh of the movies set in The Conjuring universe and for the most part, these have been successful films (I’m not talking about box office here, although that’s been good for them too on most of these, is my understanding). This one is the third of what had been a series of stand alone spin offs featuring the Annabelle doll from The Conjuring but this one also has the added bonus of having opening and closing sequences featuring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprising their roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren. Lorraine Warren passed away earlier in the year and there’s a nice little ‘In Memorium’ type statement at the end of the film before the end credits roll.

In terms of the doll centred films in general, I’m going to start off by saying that this is not as bad as the first prequel, Annabelle (reviewed here) but by no means as good as the second prequel to that prequel, Anabelle Creation (reviewed here). This one, though, is set after both of those films and starts off with the Warrens bringing the doll back to their house so they can put it in a glass case and keep the evil contained. So it’s kind of set before the bits of The Conjuring where the Annabelle doll gets out near the end and this is a whole ‘adventure’ involving the doll that somehow wasn’t mentioned in those earlier movies. So wedged in between the various installments, it kinda doesn’t help that the main protagonist of this film, Lorraine Warren’s young daughter Judy, is played by somebody totally different... a young actress called Mckenna Grace. Not that she doesn’t do a great job... it’s just confusing but, with the way child actors' faces change so quickly, probably a necessity of setting this one back a bit before the events of some of the other films.

Grace is ably supported by two other teenage antagonists played by Madison Iseman and Katie Sarife as Judy’s babysitters while the Warrens are away for an evening and if you’re thinking that this movie seems overly teenage oriented for a franchise that has, with the two main movies at least, proved to be a mature, well made series of horror films... you’d be right. This is kind of a ‘Conjuring light’ movie and the plot revolves around something which we’ve seen since the opening of the very first movie in the sequence, the Warren’s ‘trophy room’. The writers have always made it clear that the things in this room should not be disturbed in any way lest the 'evil spirits' within return to their demonic ways so, of course, this is a film about what happens when one of the three protagonists goes on a rampage of curiosity within the forbidden room and lets out, not just the Annabelle doll but a load of other nasty characters too... since the Annabelle is known for being a conduit for all things demonic.

So, yeah, spooky things are afoot and it would be remiss of me not to mention that this movie does feel a lot less like an Annabelle movie and more like Nancy Drew Meets The Conjuring. However, saying that, it’s still very good at laying on the unbearable suspense and not always so obvious jump scares which, frankly, makes it a lot more scarier than some of the other movies I’ve seen at the cinema lately (cough... Midsommar... cough... In Fabric).

In fact, right from the opening ‘mini-adventure’ involving Ed and Lorraine Warren trying to drive the Annabelle doll home before she can kill them, we have the director deliberately playing with the conventions of the horror movie format by setting up not one but two view obscuring moments which he completely doesn’t use to deliver the obvious shock moments. They follow on from each other very quickly and the first of these is when Ed pops the bonnet of his car, thus obscuring what’s going on behind the windscreen from inside, where Lorraine is seated. Straight after, Lorraine opens up a large map of the area which completely blocks out our view of her side window. So, the director already knows we are expecting at least one of these two things to be hiding a jump scare and cleverly skips these... only revealing a cast of spirits from one of the views when we already know what’s happening out there.

Later on, when the film gets into full flow, the usual horror movie rules apply, where things are consistently obscured from the camera or deliberately used to foreshadow action which doesn’t actually come from the usual, on screen sources... and it’s a nice touch which shows that the film makers are at least thinking about the way an audience can second guess where the scares are coming from and, in this way at least, the film is consistent with the two main Conjuring titled movies. So yeah, one of the strong points of these films is that they respect the audience’s knowledge of the visual and audio semantics of the horror movie enough to be able to play around with things from time to time.

Another nice thing was the appearance of the brand of rag doll which was the actual Annabelle doll from the real life case make another minor cameo in this film. I think this has happened at least twice now.

Joseph Bishara’s score is, of course, another strong element of the film and it’s another case of a modern horror film giving us some effective and listenable scoring which isn’t just about extensions of the sound design. Alas, so far there’s only a stupid electronic download of the thing but if ever a CD comes out, I’ll be first in line to buy it. In fact, if a CD doesn’t come out then it will be the first movie in The Conjuring universe to not have one... so I really hope they don’t go the Marvel route with this by not releasing ‘much wanted’ CDs for some of the films.

Ultimately, as I’ve possibly oversold here earlier, the film is like a crazy fun house ride for kids in terms of the mix of teenagers with a whole load of different demonic entities after them but it does, at least, introduce us to some characters which I feel would be nicely explored in other spin offs. The spirit from the last movie in the series, The Curse Of La Llorona (which I reviewed here) makes a brief, fleeting appearance near the very start of the movie but, alas, there’s no reference to The Nun that I could easily spot. However, I think promising characters like a spooky ferryman demon, a killer bride and a big, ferocious werewolf spirit could be happily explored in future spin offs and, I suspect, be more effectively used than they were able to be in a movie which was trying to cram them all in together before we’ve already met them all properly.

At the end of the day, if you loved The Conjuring movies and the Annabelle spin offs then you should have a good time with Annabelle Comes Home. It’s not exactly intense horror but it did procure some screams from the audience I saw it with and fans of the genre in general shouldn’t have too much of a bad time with it. Not an essential watch but if you’re a fan of the cinematic incarnation of The Warrens then you should probably give this one some of your time. 

Annabelle: Creation

The Doll Monty

Annabelle: Creation
2017 USA Directed by David F. Sandberg
UK cinema release print.

Well Annabelle: Creation is a fun film.

Much more entertaining than I was expecting given that I wasn’t all that into Annabelle (reviewed here). That being said, it does spend all of its time wallowing in the most obvious ‘horror movie clichés’ you can imagine but, although there are no real surprises throughout the movie (barring a couple of nice moments), it at least executes these conventions in a concise and joyous manner and, while there’s almost a deliberate absence of character depth to the movie, it really succeeds in one of the main intents of a horror film... it’s a fair bit scary in places.

Annabelle: Creation is, of course, actually the fourth film to feature the title character after a quite important set of appearances in The Conjuring (reviewed here) which was, in my humble opinion, probably the best horror movie of the last decade and a brief glimpse of an appearance in The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case (set in my home town here in the UK and reviewed by me here). Now, I have to admit I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for this movie since the stories themselves are obviously no longer relying on the real life events that are alleged to have taken place in The Conjuring movies and I’m guessing this is Hollywood totally doing its own thing with the ‘character’. To be honest, there was already a ‘creation’ scene in terms of how the doll came to be demonically possessed in Annabelle so I couldn’t possibly see where this thing could go without contradicting itself. Well, if that’s what you are thinking too, fear not, there’s actually a pretty good tie in towards the end of the movie with a little segment which takes place twelve years after the main body of this one... where you get to see certain events you’ve seen before in another movie from a different point of view and which ties it in, quite neatly, to the canon as a whole. No real continuity problems there.

The film starts off with a doll maker putting the Limited Edition brand on the wooden packaging of the first Annabelle doll and it introduces us to his wife and child. However, as in the trailer to this movie, it’s not long before their daughter meets with a tragic and untimely death. The child’s sudden death is handled quite jarringly in a masterstroke of build up and editing, much more intensely implied than as seen on the film’s marketing campaign. The film then jumps on a number of years to a nun and her six charges as they move into the big house with the doll maker and his wife, setting up as a new orphanage. Of course, right away the haunted, demonic shenanigans begin with the children and the director then spends the rest of the time trying to pile on the fear. Which he does quite well but, like I said, clichés...

And I do mean clichés. One of the main child protagonists is partially crippled by polio and right away we are introduced to a chair-lift which can only move up or down once the occupant is seat belted into it. So there’s a situation just rife for a horror chase scene right there and you can bet the director sure uses this set up later. Similarly, we have a ‘dumb waiter’ in one of the rooms with a door which keeps sliding open. Yeah, right. No possibilities for haunted, horror escape routes there then, right? We even have a sinister scarecrow and a big, scary well on the property so, you know, the writers and director are taking no chances in throwing potential horror tropes at you from the word go here. I’d be super critical of all of this if it wasn’t for the fact that the director knows he isn’t fooling anybody and milks the horror elements with almost perfect timing while utilising some strong performances from the kids. One of whom I was especially fearful for, played by Lulu Wilson... due to her similar appearance, in my mind, to a young Hayley Mills.

Now, the film is quite intense but that didn’t stop me from seeing the humour in the film and kind of laughing at certain ‘fright moments’ due to their manipulative obviousness, it has to be said... although certain members of the audience were certainly freaking out right from the start here. Don’t know what that was all about... it wasn’t that scary.

The film certainly plays with the conventions of horror without doing much that’s original with them, I’m sorry to say but, the possible unintentional humour of a few scenes certainly doesn’t go against it and I think most lovers of the genre will be happy with this one. Despite the lack of surprises, though, it does have one very surprising moment in it which isn’t pertinent to the main plot... at least not of this movie, at any rate but, certainly of a movie which is coming to cinemas next year. Keep a sharp eye out for a little scene near the start of the film where Sister Charlotte (played by Stephanie Sigman) is showing the doll maker (played by Anthony LaPaglia) a photograph of her last diocese. There’s a beautifully done, shared universe moment here which I’m sure we’ll get the back story to in 2018. Actually, there’s another nice little moment which may catch people off guard during the film, also using a photograph. I won’t go into too much detail but let’s just say “the eyes have it” and leave it at that.

Benjamin Wallfisch provides a score which, while not exactly a million miles away from what other composers are doing within this genre at the moment, is an effective bit of blood curdling "sound design seeks atonal ferocity with GSOH for scary scoring". It’s appropriate and effective when he pulls out all the stops which he does frequently because, despite the conventions being solidly delivered by the director of this movie, Sandberg also does something which you can’t usually get away with if you want to produce an effective horror movie. This being that there are actually very few rest moments between the various horror set pieces. There are some, obviously but... they are very short and so the horror sequences are almost just piled one on top of the other with very little time for the audience to calm down and pause for breath. This really shouldn’t work as effectively as it does here though so, again, it doesn’t really harm the movie. I suspect the pausing beats that are in here might well have been longer in the first assembly of the movie but were maybe whittled down to up the pacing on this one... who knows, the film might have been even more effective for some longer ‘downtime’ sequences but, as it stands, it seems to manage to hold up nicely without them so, no worries there.

Eagle eyed fans of the real life horrors behind the haunted Annabelle doll will get a little treat too. It’s not exactly a secret that the scary Annabelle doll used for these movies looks nothing like the real life counterpart made famous by the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren. When one of the characters is given a new doll right at the end of the movie, that rag doll is actually a copy of the ‘real’ Annabelle doll so, you might want to keep an eye out for that. Just don’t leave that eye out for long though or you, too, may become the subject of a real life horror filled event.

And that’s me done on Annabelle: Creation. I really wasn’t expecting to like it but, although I did have moments where I was more comically amused than scared at certain points, it’s a pretty intense, single minded ride which horror fans should really get on with. A word of warning though... if you leave when the credits starts rolling then you are going to miss out. There are two post credits scenes on this movie... one half way through the credits which is pretty much what you were expecting the film to do as its last shot anyway but then, hold on because there’s a more substantial appearance of another character once the credits have finished. I won’t say anything about this now but I’m sure I’ll be mentioning it again in a future review, if you catch my drift. In the meantime though, this ones a minor but effective horror concoction that genre fans will not want to miss.

The Conjuring 2

Warren Piece

The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case
2016 USA Directed by James Wan
UK cinema release print.

With special thanks to my good friend Doctor Rob Wilson for providing the exclusive ‘behind the scenes’ pictures while The Conjuring 2 was filming last year, three of which are pictured above.

When I reviewed The Conjuring, also directed by James Wan, a few years ago... I proclaimed that it was essentially one of the all time great, classic horror films (you can read that review here). There was a spin off film about the spooky doll who featured in that film, Annabelle (review here) but this was not exactly the classic that The Conjuring was, to be fair. As far as the original film goes, though, I still believe that it’s going to be even more well thought of in, say, 40 years time, than it is now. Definitely it will be hailed and remembered as one of the all time greats of the genre... I'm pretty sure about that.

Now The Conjuring 2, which has the subtitle The Enfield Case, at least for the British public, is also not quite the classic that the first movie was and, frankly, how could it be? That being said, it certainly doesn’t stop lightening from striking twice in that it’s still a beautifully put together horror movie and it lives up to the high standards of that first outing pretty well. If you go and see this next adventure from the real life files of Ed and Lorraine Warren’s case books, played charmingly again by the wonderful duo of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, it really won’t leave any bitter taste in your mouth and it’s a true, spiritual sequel to that first, opening movie a couple of years ago.

I had an extra reason for wanting to catch this sequel as soon as possible and so I went on the Monday night it opened in my local cinema, which is an unusual day to release a movie on over here in the UK. That reason being that the main narrative of the movie is actually set (and also shot) not very far from where I’ve been living the last 40 years. I moved to the Enfield of the story back in 1976, after surviving a mind bogglingly strange car accident, which I won’t go into here. The stuff which was happening in this film started happening a year later in 1977 and it was a bit of a local myth around town at the time. I personally didn’t hear quite so much about it because I spent two years being home schooled due to the accident I had but it was featured on a lot of TV shows at the time... the late 1970s in Enfield was the zeitgeist of the poltergeist, I guess.

The movie starts off completely differently to how I thought it would... actually picking back up with the Warrens’ not long after we left them in the last movie, when they were going to investigate a certain, extremely famous haunting which was also one of their cases. So things pick up here with a seance style session within that investigation around what many people now know as... The Amityville Horror. In fact, the set designers choose to pick up on the architectural design of the 1970s movie but, instead of seeing those big ‘eye’-conic windows from the outside, we see them from inside the house. This opening sequence which has Lorraine leaving her body and going through some disturbing visions isn’t just to remind us who the characters are, either... but I’m trying to do this without spoilers so I won’t go into too much detail here.

Once again, James Wan and his crew prove themselves to be absolute masters of this kind of genre horror movie, with long lingering shots that dwell at places where you can either see or imagine details which may or may not be important. Everything is timed pretty perfectly, which anyone who has seen some of the horror movies coming out over the last few years knows isn’t a given, and the movement of the camera combined with the slow discovery by the actors or the frantic mad dashes for escape or engagement with various evil forces, does a lot to help the director ratchet up the tension to almost unbearable levels at some points.

And, of course, one of the best ingredients of the first film is carried over into this one... in that all the human characters are really nice people who you would not wish to see any of this stuff happening to. Farmiga and Wilson excel at playing these two characters and their level of charm is completely off the scale. They portray the couple as so ‘in love’ and that really helps ground the horror film and also, of course, increases the emotional stakes. The scene where Wilson plays the guitar and imitates Elvis is such a great scene which might have slowed down the whole film in the hands of another director and editor... but presented as it is here, it does wonders for the movie. The two leads are coupled with a bunch of actors and actresses who are absolutely faultless, with special shout outs to Madison Wolfe and Frances O’ Connor, as the main troubled daughter and her mother. In fact, the whole cast manage to accurately bring to life the stresses and camaraderie that living in this particular town at this particular time was like and it really rang true for me. I remember people like this from my childhood. They even got Franka Potente in there as a sceptical researcher and it was good seeing her on screen again.

So, of course, you totally fear for them all.

Especially when the writers fling further tension at the audience in an earlyish part of the picture involving Lorraine’s vision of Ed’s death in a specific manner which you are just waiting to half happen all the way through the movie. You know there’s going to be a high stress moment coming at some point in the movie and... well... yeah, the iconography from the vision certainly comes into play at one point in the running time.

There’s one thing which I did find silly in that the girls are reported here as going to Enfield Grammar School, and it seems to have been shot there too. I know because that’s my old school and I recognised quite a lot of it. However, I should probably point out that, in real life, the girls didn’t go there because, well... it was an all boys school. So I did find that kinda curious but I guess it was done to give something with more recognition value for audiences, in terms of the name of the school and reminding the audience where the majority of the movie is set when transitioning between countries at certain points for establishing shots.

However, this is really the only thing I noticed as maybe not ringing true, well, apart from all the ridiculous, over the top stuff which is part and parcel of these kinds of films. And the movie does, of course, benefit from having another of Joseph Bishara’s marvellously effective horror scores. It’s got a slightly different tone from most of his other horror work, as did the score to the previous Conjuring movie he worked on and he really does quality and supportive work in this field. I just wish somebody would give him some other genres to work in so we can hear what else his compositional voice is capable of. Great score though and you can bet I’ll be snagging a CD when that’s released (in fact, it turns out it's only available on a proper physical format from US amazon so... head over to their website if you want a credible version of the music).

And that’s all I’ve got for this one. A generally spooky film which, although not quite as great as the first one in the series, certainly lives up to the former film’s reputation and it deserves the success it’s already garnering at the box office. Hopefully a rich box office will mean we can see Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles as Ed and Lorraine sooner rather than later. It’s like they were born to play these characters and I certainly want to see more of them. If you liked the first movie or even you didn’t see that one, The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case is well worth some of your time if you’re a horror movie afficionado. A masterful approach to the subject material and I hope James Wan also comes back for a third go with these characters.

Annabelle

Adoradoll

Annabelle
2014  USA
Directed by John R. Leonetti
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Ever so slight spoilers on some of 
the scares but not really story spoilers as such.

Annabelle is a prequel made in the wake of the popularity of the film, based on a real life tale of demonic possession investigated by The Warrens, Ed and Lorraine, called The Conjuring (reviewed here). Although the doll, known as Annabelle, does have some part to play in the opening of The Conjuring (as a scene setter for the central characters) and final parts of the former movie, Annabelle is never really anything than a scary bonus which has nothing to do with the basic plot of that film.

While the makers of The Conjuring are in the midst of trying to get a sequel churned out, possibly involving the Enfield Poltergeist (although I’m told The Warrens didn’t have a heck of a lot to do with that particular case), New Line have decided to throw this film out in the meantime to strike the box office coffers while the iron is hot, so to speak. So this film is based on the story of Annabelle before she came into the final possession of Ed and Lorraine, although the producers have gone to some lengths to connect it to The Conjuring by using Ed’s voice and a replay of some of the early scenes from the first film pertaining to the misadventures of the doll... again, to set the tone at the start of this new movie.

Now, if you’ve read my review of The Conjuring, you’ll know I absolutely loved it and proclaimed it among the best horror movies ever made.. for a number of reasons. So I was kinda looking forward to seeing Annabelle until I started hearing very low key things about it not being very good. In fact, all the tweets and reviews I read on it, bar one, said that it was a pretty dreadful film. The one good review I read started with the admission that the reviewer in question never really like The Conjuring all that much and so I figured I might be setting myself up for a fall looking forward to this prequel.

As it turns out, Annabelle isn’t a terrible film, on the face of it. It’s clichéd, for sure, but then again so are most horror movies that are all playing with a similar set of rules and this movie certainly had a fair few scenes which are going to make viewers, at the very least, a little anxious.

One of the strengths of the first movie is that pretty much all the cast were likeable and someone you felt you could hang out with. Certainly, the lead protagonists of Annabelle, a newly pregnant wife called Mia (played by Annabelle Wallis) and her husband John (played by Ward Horton) are pictured as very nice people to be with... although they don’t seem to have the same kind of appeal as the characters in the first movie and the film possibly doesn’t take enough time to explore their personalities. Things start to go wrong for them not so much later after John buys Mia, a doll collector, a hard to get piece for her collection... yeah, that’s right, the Annabelle of the title. Pretty soon after that, Mia and John’s nice n’ comfy next door neighbours get a visitation from a formerly missing daughter and her culty boyfriend. They’ve come home to slash her mum and dad to tiny pieces and then, once they’ve seen to that, they come for Mia and John. The daughter is from a satanic cult (we know as much because of the news broadcast in the background in a scene prior to these events which is pushing the Manson Murders as being a current thing) and she dies at the hands of the police but, not before she’s dripped some of her blood into the eyes of the Annabelle doll. Our heroes don’t escape unscathed but, after enough bizarre visitations by scary occurrences, our two main protagonists move to another town and start again, leaving the troublesome doll behind in a trash can.

Things start to happen not long after the Annabelle doll turns up in their new house again and Mia, and her new daughter, ar both targeted by the usual manifestations you get in these kinds of movies. It’s all done very competently and some sequences will make you jump, I suspect. That being said, there doesn’ seem to be much new on offer here and there are a lot of big scripting signposts which point to future events in the movie in several places. Like the family befriending both the local priest with an expertise on evil (evil, I tells ya) and the lady who runs the second hand bookshop... who also happens to be knowledgable about demonology etc. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious what roles these people are going to play in the movie so I can understand why people have been expecting more from this one. That being said, from the swooping and luxurious camerawork and the jump/cut/scare editing (which does need split second timing, to be fair) to Joseph Bishara’s usual sound design versus melody scoring style, in which he already seems to be getting an old hand but which does what it does when it needs to... this film is, at the very least, competently put together and should give a fair few of you something like a good time at the cinema.

There’s some really nice stuff going on too.

Annabelle herself, for example, is a classic piece of audience driven suspense in that, apart from when she’s being manipulated by someone or something else, she doesn’t once move by herself. The camera quite often holds shot on her in a close up of her face because the director knows you are waiting for the doll to either move her eyes or perhaps just blink at some point. But that jump scare never comes and this means the director can keep delivering certain, suspenseful close ups of the doll (and don’t worry, he does) while simultaneously playing on our imagination to provide the scares and, like most directors working in this genre, Leonetti knows that our imagination is often stronger than anything he can conjure up for a movie like this.

There’s a brilliant sequence about two thirds of the way through where the writer and director appear to break their own rules about the doll, which you may have already twigged isn’t going to be doing anything on her own, by now. As Mia is in deep focus and facing out to the audience in the foreground of a shot, we notice the Annabelle doll getting up on her own as Mia then turns to stare at it. The doll begins to appear to levitate and it’s only after a little more of this that both the audience and Mia come to realise that, through the sheer chicanery of movie effects and editing, something is actually holding the doll up, back there in the darkness. Scary stuff.

There’s a nice Rosemary’s Baby kind of vibe going through the movie too. Not in terms of Mia and John’s child so much, although Mia is an obvious reference by the writer, Gary Dauberman, name checking the actress who portrayed Rosemary in the movie version of Ira Levin’s famous novel... Mia Farrow. The similarity is more in terms of atmosphere and the apartment block that Mia finds herself inhabiting mostly on her own when John is away at work. You also get the feeling that many of her acquaintances, perhaps even her husband, are in on whatever is haunting Mia... although we all know that it’s Annabelle, the daughter of the dead neighbours, who is inhabiting the doll. Or is it, exactly? There’s something of a mixed story idea, I think, because there’s also a demon coming visiting at odd hours that also seems to be using Annabelle as a conduit to our world.

The last act of the movie lets the film down somewhat, for my money. The obvious characters who our main protagonists have met over the course of the film both fulfil their very obvious roles and the ending is somewhat of a comedown given that there was a lot of subtle work throughout the majority of the rest of the movie. There’s another nice nod to The Conjuring at the end and, though there could be room for a sequel to get squeezed in here if the box office on this spin off is big enough, I suspect this is probably the last we’ll be seeing of Annabelle, descended from both real life and a series of cinematic and television “sinister dolls with minds of their own”.

If you loved The Conjuring as much as I did, then you’re certainly going ot want to watch this just to see how it fits in with things. If you are a horror fan in general then just remember that Annabelle is not exactly the greatest horror movie ever made. This is an okay and competent attempt at a fairly jumpy but ultimately slightly less than satisfying genre film and, if that’s enough for you, and for most of us that would be, then this one is definitely worth a gander. However, like I said before... it’s not The Conjuring.

The Conjuring

Conjurlingus

The Conjuring
2013 USA
Directed by James Wan
Playing at cinemas now.

Hmmm.

You know, back in the 1970s and 1980s, I used to claim that there were only, maybe, between five and ten decent horror movies ever made. Now, what I meant by that is actually, between five and ten “scary” horror movies ever made. Clearly, for example, The Bride Of Frankenstein is probably going to be on most people’s top ten horror movies but it’s probably not in any way an effective horror movie in terms of scaring anyone... unless that person is two or three years old maybe. So for when I was making that claim... I stick to my guns. There are lots of great horror films, such as Suspiria, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Night Of The Living Dead etc... but none of these movies are in any way scary.

Nowadays, however, I’d have to say my opinion has been forced to change given the influx of really well made horror films coming out in the last ten to fifteen years. Loads of films where the creeping and subtle terror, has started to make a come back in a more than competent manner. We have films that get the job done right, now, like The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, The Last Exorcism (reviewed here), Paranormal Activity 2 (reviewed here) and Paranormal Activity 3 (reviewed here) and, you know, The Blair Witch Project. Even just the last couple of years there’s been a steady increase of freshly made horrors which actually don’t fail to scare and I can probably add a lot to the likes of my original list from way back when... which included stuff like The Haunting (1963 version), The Fog (1980 version), The Shining and, tentatively, The Exorcist (The Version We’ve Already Seen). I think it’s fair to say that during the last decade or two, my list has probably doubled.

The reason I’m dredging up this stuff now is actually by way of an apology. You see, The Conjuring is actually something of a great and powerfully scary movie. That being said, though, I’ve reviewed a fair few effectively scary new movies over the past three years and so, if what I say here about this movie sounds like something of a bit of a repeat review of any of the other of the better horror movies I’ve reviewed on this blog, well I apologise.

Of course, that makes this review no less valid and the movie in question no less great.

The films is a dramatisation of the real life events of a demonic possession which plagued the Perron family back in the early seventies and the people who helped them, the real life husband and wife team of psychic investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (portrayed brilliantly in this movie by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) who, among others, investigated one case which is known to modern cinema audiences as The Amityville Horror. It’s also a very effective “scare the pants off you” movie which is not to be missed by fans of the supernatural and the unknown.

Three things distinguish this movie a little more than a lot of the other horror movies doing the rounds the past few years... the first being, of course, that we have a real life couple of protagonists who have investigated hundreds of cases which could be prepped for a sequel if this movie is successful (they are and it is, by the way... I’m expecting to see another one in a couple of years and I look forward to it greatly). So genre characters who can keep on running in a number of movies, thus filling a void left when the two movies made as extensions of the TV show The X Files turned out to be... well... a bit lame.

Another thing which make this a little different is that it’s set in a period around about 1971 (until 1973 in real life, is my understanding of events) and although there are a lot of accidental anachronisms on show for the time portrayed here, the movie generally manages to capture the spirit of this period without resorting to too much postmodernistic nostalgia... it’s not a movie about the past, in other words, it is just set in the past and this is not a ‘feature’ of the story... it is just another fact.

The other element which sets it apart is its confidence in breaking the narrative flow to put in little diversions and emphasise points with a bit of visual punctuation, so to speak, not unlike a 1960s Godard movie... although with a completely different motive. It’s also to the credit of the director in question that this never really breaks the spell of the film... merely serves to enhance little points at key moments. Also, it’s not done all over the place either. It’s a tool which is used on the odd occasion and which doesn’t outstay its welcome.

A couple of “mini past cases” from  The Warrens are highlighted, for example, one of which... involving the much loved horror film staple of “a creepy doll”... is even used to clarify certain events pertaining to the case The Warrens are working on in the main timeline of the movie in no uncertain terms (you’ll know it when you see it... Ed and Lorraine Warren are not the only people besides their assistants and The Perron Family who are placed in demonic peril... but I really don’t want to spoil it for you so I’ll say nothing of this here).

And now we come to the stuff which is possibly going to sound a bit like one or two of my other reviews... but I write this because it’s the truth. The film-makers obviously know horror movies inside out and, though I had my reservations about the last 20 minutes or so of this director’s Insidious (which turned me off that whole movie, to a certain extent), this guy certainly knows how to run almost every horror cliché in the book throughout the film’s, never overlong, running time and still get away with it. That is to say, he has honed his feel for horror cinema to the point where, even though you are expecting quite a lot of what goes down in some of the key scare sequences, they are always so beautifully and effectively executed that you really can’t find fault with them. Indeed, you don’t have time to find fault because the sequences in question, coming ready or not, will make you jump out of your skin at some points. So if you are already a jumpy person... consider yourself warned.

Also, the director is not one of these people who is inclined to keep the camera moving all over the place at high speed to make it look like it’s moving along at breakneck place but, that being said, he does tend to have a very slow shifting field of vision which gives the feeling of static master shots when, in fact, they didn’t seem to be. Very slow takes and edits seems to be the order of the day here (thank goodness) and the slight sense of motion inherent in every 24 frames of film is really hypnotic and helps to draw you into that all important atmosphere of terror the crew is trying hard to create here.

And it works really well. Right down to Joseph Bishara’s original score which really supports the film well and which I have to wait a month to arrive on CD because, for some reason I can’t fathom, it’s only available from US Amazon and not the UK Amazon. Go figure. So I can’t tell you as yet what it’s like as a stand alone listen but it’s really effective in the movie and I’m sure it will scare me loads when I finally get around to listening to it. Certainly goes for a mood of terror and unease and gets it right all the way.

The one thing this movie really has going for it though, right throughout the entire movie, is that all the human characters (and by that I mean, people who aren’t dead and are ghostly or demonic spirits) are completely likeable characters who you really wouldn’t mind hanging around with at a pub and who really promote a certain, solid set of loving family values. And of course, this makes the spiritual and deadly attacks on them even more frightening. You care about all of these characters... so you’re invested in them right from the outset.

And of course, the actors portraying all of these people are just great in their roles. There’s honestly not a bad turn among them. These are skilled craftsmen and craftswomen who, along with the rest of the crew, have come together to make a horror movie which will literally, for want of a more eloquent term, “scare you up good”. And it’s to their credit that, in The Conjuring, they do just that. If you call yourself a fan of horror cinema then, although it might all seem a little overfamiliar perhaps, you really ought to go and see this movie and have some kind of opinion of it... good or bad. I had a lot of fun with this one... and so did the packed out audience I saw it with, if the jumps and screams are anything to go by.