A wonderful film that reminds us of the building blocks of horror filmmaking

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2013)

In a way, director James Wan has evolved as a horror filmmaker for the better. His first effort in the field was the torture porn flick Saw, a mostly solid, amiable effort. His followups were the equally tense films Dead Silence and Insidious (whose sequel-trailer precedes The Conjuring), and now, has evolved as a filmmaker who articulates tension and buildup beautifully with The Conjuring, a taut display of creepy horror cinema.
The plot: Carolyn and Roger Perron (Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston) and their five daughters move into an old decrepit farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and begin to experience the a string of paranormal activity in the house. The clocks all specifically freeze at 3:07am, a music box one of the daughters plays with has her claiming she can see a boy named "Rori" when it finishes playing music, and odd smells and physical abuse come about from what appears to be paranormal entities, as well.
Helpless and after the haunting seems to cause mental harm to the children, Carolyn and Roger seek out the help of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Famiga), two paranormal investigators that try to piece together what, if anything, is haunting the Perron farmhouse and how the "inhuman spirits" came about.
The Conjuring's plot is obviously sickeningly familiar and horribly unoriginal. However, despite the overused and questionable 'based on a true story' that the film states early-on, it works largely in part because it tries to make the events here believable and not real. The film itself is meant to serve as something of a retelling of true events - not the actual thing. When watching a sequel to Paranormal Activity, which is passed off as real and not a work of fiction, you find yourself asking, "how is this real?" When watching this film, which is passed off as realistic, you find yourself asking, "how is this not real?" This is largely thanks to James Wan's studious camera framing and John R. Leonetti's wonderfully creepy, seventies-style cinematography. It's difficult to make a modern home scary, but one from the seventies, featuring eerie knick-knacks, odd wallpaper, strange little porcelain dolls, and a load of dark places is inherently creepy in its oldness. The film features the wonderful "slowburn" technique, which will likely take criticism because The Conjuring's agenda doesn't call for anything to be rushed. At one-hundred and twelve minutes, it has just enough time in the beginning to show you the atmosphere of the rural area where the farmhouse resides and takes the time to build tension effectively.
Usually the last thing I find myself discussing when reviewing horror films is the acting, but the naturalistic acting of everyone here must be formally mentioned. Patrick Wilson and Vera Famiga (who always seems to take front-and-center in several contemporary horror films) works wonders as two demonologists, who will inevitably become victim to the Perron haunting as well as trying to be the ones remedying the effects. Ron Livingston has been spectacular in the several film roles he has taken in the last few years, and this one here is no exception, and Lili Taylor takes the cake here as the strongest performance, as he simply tries to be the caring and compassionate mother when the uncertain is taking effect.
The Conjuring takes the personality a lot of Hammer Horror Films do, which are, what have now been called, "classic horror films" that emphasized tension and atmosphere over blood and quickly-paced action. The closest thing I've seen to The Conjuring in the last year or so was probably the forgotten but memorable Woman in Black, which was largely a movie about Daniel Radcliffe roaming a house full of eerie decorations and cobwebs. It was a creepy, tonally effective picture and that's just what The Conjuring is.
Not everything works here as well as you'd expect. The development gets a little predictable and the ending seems to cave too much into mainstream expectations. However, this is still a wonderful change-of-pace for contemporary horror, especially being a summer release, when, if anything, the most serious horror films come out in the early months of the year. If anything, The Conjuring reminds us what the fundamental principles of horror filmmaking are, it's that the environment is everything and that forgoing that thought for lame, contrived scenes of slaughter, exorcism, or mindless drivel is an act of genre-blasphemy.
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Vera Famiga, Lili Taylor, and Ron Livingston. Directed by: James Wan.