Good, but "like butter scraped over too much bread"

Rating: 6/10 (19 July 2013)

All of which follows is my personal opinion on the movie. Going into the movie, I had already done quite a bit of research on the Warrens, the family, and the events that took place. Most of what they had on screen is what reportedly happened to the family of this house. The Warren's are actual supernatural investigators (now, how reliable they are, I don't know, lol) and worked on this case and on many others. So, knowing all of that and seeing all of the trailers and whatever else I could find on the movie, I was fairly read up on it.
This may contribute to why I felt the movie was lacking. Most of the major scares in the movie were contained in the trailer and the majority of the other parts of the movie were spent on suspense and build up, which is no doubt necessary for a horror movie. But I never got the feeling that I was really connected with or to care for the family and other characters in the movie. I felt that movies like "The Possession" did a wonderful job of this.
I hesitate to say The Conjuring was horrible, though. But I would say I feel it could have been much better. I felt they spent more time then they should have on the suspense and on each night's scare than on the family and getting to know them. They also introduced the history of the house and the Warren's and their family, which was neat, but perhaps they just had too much going on to successfully have depth with each of these aspects? This was my major concern. It was a good movie, but it felt like they spread themselves too thin in the making of it and what they tried to portray in all of these different arenas.
The movie had an old school kind of horror movie feel which I really appreciated. There were pop out scares, but they were few, and there was a lot of suspense/build up, which was really cool, but I would have hoped that, in old school horror movie style, they would have spent more time on dialogue and character development. In some ways this movie is almost like watching a case study from the Warren's perspective about this other family. But that wasn't fully developed enough either.
So, all in all (and I don't hope to be too negative in this review, I just want to be honest about it), I'd recommend this if you are a haunted house/ exorcism/ possession horror fan, but if you have researched and seen all of the trailers for this movie like I had, you may walk out a bit disappointed. (But perhaps my expectations were just too high?) Anyway, good movie overall. Just a bit lacking for me. The cast did an excellent job, though. Vera Farmiga was superb as were pretty much all of the actors. I just wish this movie had more depth to it. It didn't feel that original or different from movies of the same genre. But it was certainly interesting and it held your attention from beginning to end!