The Conjuring raises the sort of havoc horror fans will be quite familiar with yet director James Wan, sticking mostly to old-school terror devices, has fashioned a crafty, often exciting hair-raiser. The stellar Vera Farmiga and reliable Patrick Wilson portray real-life 1970’s paranormal investigators Lorraine And Ed Warren–famous ghostbusters in the Amityville Horror case. Lifting from flicks like Poltergeist and The Exorcist Wan is quick to tone down both the blood-and-guts and CGI aspects of the current-day horror film. Instead his tone is straight out of traditions of even earlier films that knew the wisdom of the power of suggestion in keeping up the suspense levels.
Wan, who used Lorraine Warren herself as a consultant for the film, doesn’t let what horror cliches may be present here to cheapen or get in the way. Yeah, the family dog won’t go inside when Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and lug husband Roger (Ron Livingston) and their five daughters move into a new (old) house in Rhode Island. Birds are soon crashing into their house, clocks all stop at the same time every night, Carolyn finds herself waking up with mysterious bruises on her body, and there’s a basement where cryptic machinations seem to spring totally randomly. For good measure the youngest daughter begins chatting with–well, you’ll just have to see the movie. Luckily, not much of it is unintentionally farcical.
Wan throws in nice touches like 8mm film projections of the Warrens schooling their students on past cases.
Farmiga (Up In The Air) never stoops down to shtick, but throws down a highly nuanced, resonating performance. As a medium her desire to help these innocent victims is complicated by her own psyche having been damaged by a horrible vision from a previous case. She is a main reason this film steps it up a notch from Wan’s previous effort, Insidious. In that film, also an effective throwback to the old-school horror genre, the climax partially went for the playful. Here Wan is able to stay consistent with the Conjuring’s prevalent thread. A music box with a pop-up clown that grins like a Cheshire cat once we get a hold of what appears in its mirror, is on the spot. It reminds the next time you see a present-day horror flick you’ll probably think back on The Conjuring as that rare specimen of what scary films used to be like.
4.0 Old-School Terrors (out of 5)