Well crafted and effective, although derivative, haunted house story

Rating: 8/10 (22 October 2018)

No blood. No gore. No violence. But wonderfully suspenseful and scary haunted house story from director James Wan ("Saw" "Furious 7" and the underrated "Death Sentence"). The film is "based on a true story" of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson & Vera Farmiga) helping a family (Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor, and their brood of children) experiencing frightening and escalating supernatural attacks in their newly moved into rural home. Wan does a fine job of building suspense and in creating a dark unsettling atmosphere. A wonderfully eerie sound design greatly adds to the film's unsettling feel. If you're wondering how scary the film is, it managed to get an R-rating without any nudity, almost no profanity, and bloodless violence, earning the rating solely for it's pervasive frightening nature. The downside to the film is that although it's effectively suspenseful and scary, the story is is disappointingly derivative and familiar, with many similarities to other films, ranging from Robert Wise's "The Haunting" to Tobe Hooper & Steven Spielberg's "Poltergeist" to even the "The Grudge." Another disappointment is that Wan relies on a jump scare several times too often, which is pretty much the cheapest scare you can put into a horror film. Master of Horror John Carpenter once said it doesn't take any talent to make a jump scare, saying all you need to do is run a series of black frames and then splice in a white frame with a loud noise and you'll make the audience jump. One or two jump scares might be acceptable, but Wan goes to this well far too often and it comes off as a lazy way to scare the audience. Still, despite Wan's perchance for easy scares, he has made a film with believable characters and created a eerily atmospheric film that is well worth watching for horror fans, even if you've seen this type of story at lease a dozen times before.