The Conjuring Review

Rating: 9/10 (5 August 2013)

Yikes! It's rare for a film to rattle me at my very existence. The Conjuring (2013) does just that. It throws me off kilter much like the nightmare that causes my heart to splitter-spatter and forces my eyeballs wide-open in broad daylight. It takes me a minute to catch my breath. I realize the nightmare that scares me awake is the one in which I find myself impregnated with my ex-boyfriend's baby. To which I realize, it is what it is--a nightmare! It's horrifying because it's so vivid it's real.
James Wan brilliantly directs Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and Lili Taylor in the horror flick, The Conjuring. This film is based on the true story of paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warren's are desperately called upon by Carolyn and Roger Perron to investigate their farmhouse which appears to be terrorized by an evil entity. The audience is taken on a journey similar to that of The Exorcist (1973), The Others (2001), and House at the End of the Street (2012). To my surprise; however, I am pleased with the resolution.
Wan is able to differentiate The Conjuring from The Exorcist, The Others, and House at the End of the Street by getting to the root of the problem and having an answer to the WHY scenario. In The Exorcist, the audience is creeped out by an inhumane entity that leaches itself onto a young girl forcing her to have extraordinary behaviors while The Others interrogates the residents of an old English mansion leaving its audience with the OH. MY. GOD. ARE. YOU. SERIOUS? reaction. House at the End of the Street leaves its viewers with an uneasiness of a psychopathic killer whom is predicted before the ending arises.
In each of these films a resolution has yet to be justified. If THEY (current occupants) move to another house, city, state...location, doesn't that give the enemy power and satisfaction knowing it succeeds into scaring the residents into another direction ultimately giving power to the darkness, the ghosts, essentially the protagonist? The Conjuring squashes any intention of house-hopping. 'IT attaches itself to this family like a piece of gum. Once you step on a piece of gum it's stuck wherever you go.' By facing the fear of darkness, an uneasiness births into something admirable about humanity. Not only is the existence of God in question, but the Evil that prevails within the human race.
I must add though, I'm most horrified, not by The Conjuring, but the incidence that I witness in the theater before the lights dim and the advertisements inundate the screen. And, that is, as I am patiently waiting in my cushioned seat, two young gentlemen approach the theater. Both, I say, in their early-twenties are trying to find the "perfect" seat in which they can screen the anticipation of this mind-boggling-scare-me-to-death-masterpiece. As I pretend to be amused by their indecisiveness the next thing I know one of the guys pulls something out from the crotch of his pants that he smuggles into the theater (a no-no, I might add). As he whips out this object he stares me in the eyes and says, "Summer sausage..you know how it is." He then peels it like a banana and slowly sinks his teeth into it. Now that folks is what I call horrifying!