definitely not the "masterpiece/modern classic" it has been hyped up to be

Rating: 3/10 (1 July 2016)

This is going to be less of a review and more of a rant, so let me get the good parts of the movie out of the way. It's competently acted, and there isn't a bad child actor in the bunch. It's also pretty well shot, with James Wan using long shots where the camera floats around and through windows and walls, giving it a feeling of omnipotence. Now for the bad.
The intro is god awful. I'm not exaggerating when I say it made my entire theater erupt in laughter as Lorraine Warren pulled out in invisible shotgun to murder a family in a sort of dream-sequence. This accompanied by the fact that her hands are sped up every time she pulls the lever back to reload turn an intentionally "intense" introduction into a self-parody.
Next, this movie's CGI is also god awful. They were so lazy with so many parts that it's almost unbelievable how this movie has been made out to be a masterpiece by so many people. Instead of using a prop cigarette that produces smoke they said "f**k it" and just made crappy CG smoke. Instead of using machines to produce fake snow or create realistic rain effects the crew must have decided that was gonna take too much effort so they instead just CG'd the rain and snow effects. And they aren't even good CG like in the fast and furious movies that Wan does. It's like he decided his VFX and FX crews should be made up of entirely by monkeys with down-syndrome. The 2spooky4me memelord skelingtons in this movie don't look any better. The possessed girl (yeah I'll get to the clichÃ©s of the story later) is completely CG, including her fake face veins and Sh**ty cat-monster eyes, and the evil nun demon monster that makes no sense has a Cg mouth tentacle thing that looks straight out of the resident evil movies that shouldn't be getting made anymore. But the icing on this @ss flavored cake is the amazing idea to put the skeleton from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in this movie, complete with the wonky frame rate that comes with claymation that makes things look like they aren't really moving right. It doesn't make sense on an artistic level (cause it isn't F!^&%%!%^@CKing scary!), and even less sense in a real life level. The dog literally transforms into the monster in front of a little boys very eyes. Like if it has this power why did it decide to use it only right there and never again. That's probably more useful than just about every other monsters' power in this movie, yet it just decides to do it once and only for the spooks cause lol this movie is so scary right guys gosh James Wan u master of horror u. ALso CGI tree spikes killing major characters in hallucinations is definitely 100% super intense not fake looking at all gr8 job m8 8/8.
OK for my favorite part, the story. It. Doesn't. Make. F**king. Sense....... Like I've seen so many message boards trying to understand certain motivations and all I can think is "guys. No one writing this movie gave a sh!t. There is no explanation...". So first off the main antagonist is valak or whatever and he can only be defeated by finding out then saying his name yadda yadda yadda clichÃ© clichÃ© clichÃ© sure whatever. Now this nun monster valak enters the movie in physical form to terrorize Lorraine Warren once in her little spirit world, and once inside her house (btw the house scene, this movies so-called "scariest scene of the decade", is absolutely retarded. the demon literally grabs a picture, uses it as a face, and runs at Lorraine while both its hands are still holding the picture. It looks like those kids that try to do Naruto ninja running because their parents don't love them). Now you might be saying, why does she do that? Well wouldn't you know it, the house the Warrens investigate just so happens to be terrorized by Valak. So Valak must have been f@cking with Lorraine to try and draw her and her husband to the house right? Except as soon as they get to the house the demon tries to make it look like the family is faking everything, and therefore tries and almost succeeds in making the paranormal investigators leave. What was the point in haunting Lorraine then? If it wasn't to draw her to the house the only explanation can be just to scare the audience. In fact drawing them to the house only leads to the demon being defeated. There is absolutely no reason Lorraine should be seeing this ghost unless it is through some kind of ghost world logic that the movie never explains. If that is true then it's pretty f*&#*cking stupid to not explain a major lore/plot element like that to the audience once... God this movie makes me want to jump off the roof of my house more than everyday life already does so i rate it 3/10 don't see it unless you want cancer I hope somebody actually reads this big wall- of-text review