Better than most offerings in today's horror market

Rating: 7/10 (1 September 2013)

I decided to finally get around to seeing this film after seeing that it was time for the second one to come out and I found The Conjuring to be a pretty good modern horror movie. For the first hour of the movie I found the suspense and scares to be well done. It's not often that I can compliment a modern horror movie for that. For the last 40 minutes of the movie, however, I didn't enjoy nearly as much. While it still had that creepy mood I didn't really have the same feeling as the first half of the film. This movie did a good job of establishing its own mythology in the confines of its world and I found it to be overall pretty well done. However, the being that was shown only in shadows was better done by just sticking to the shadows. Later in the movie they show it up close and it lost a little bit of the edge it had while keeping to the edges of sight. The "home" of this thing was also quite well done for the design and definitely had a sense of dark humor about it with the workshop (Tiny Tim music was great).
The ending, which a lot of people seem to have issues with, makes sense to me personally just due to all the threads laid out all throughout the runtime. However it left some unanswered questions that I'm hoping the sequel will elaborate on and allow for a 2-part end to this storyline instead of pulling a Paranormal Activity which still leaves some unknown things in the air for years.
Overall, I actually do recommend this movie. It has a well done suspense feel for the most part and was definitely an enjoyable film for myself since I usually wind up just rewatching horror movies in the 80s and further back. I gave this movie a 7/10 due to some of the issues with the tone change at the hour mark, the (for lack of a better term) sequel bait ending that didn't fully cover the ramifications, and some points that I just wound up losing interest due to some parts having some slow pacing.
Regardless of these things, just watch the movie and decide for yourself. It's certainly not a bad movie by any stretch and will allow for some enjoyment of the modern movie market, at least for a horror fan.