Excellent

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2016)

This was an unbelievably good movie, and not just a horror movie. It really is a story about the power of love and faith under the most dire and frightening circumstances. In fact, twice the movie was so intensely scary but also emotional that I actually teared up, and I'm usually pretty stoic in movies.
The story structure is really well done. You have two plots in the beginning, the English Hodgson family and the American demonologists, the Warrens. As the haunting is beginning to wreak havoc on the Hodgson family, the Warrens have become spiritually exhausted due to the evil they're constantly forced to confront.
What was different and brilliant about this movie was the use of doubt and skepticism. Most demon horror movies use the lame fallback of everyone disbelieving the besieged victim, and you're just irritated that no one is on the victim's side because it's so obvious they're not delusional or whatever. With this movie, they go to great lengths to demonstrate how meticulously the Warrens obtain proof and aren't just there on some crusade.
This added a great deal of plausibility for me, which made it so much more frightening. I haven't been this scared since I saw the first Conjuring movie.