Everything wrong with modern horror.

Rating: 2/10 (11 March 2019)

Why do people like this movie? I'm not trying to be snooty but it's crazy... I don't think there's a single other horror movie that I'd say is more over-rated.
I watch a lot of this kind of movie and I'll be the first to admit that they can be a bit...repetitive (to put it nicely).
I have a rule where I never watch a movie whose title is a gerund because they always seem to be terrible. But I lifted that rule for this because people kept telling me "it's not like the other conveyor belt horror!".
Well, sorry to rain on your parade but it actually kind of is. I don't mind tropes. Tropes are tools. But this is one of the most derivative, generic horror movies I've ever seen. The cliches just keep on coming....evil smells bad... the dog knows... dark little cellars...and the most annoying of all: the paranormal investigators.
To me horror is a fight between people and the unknown. But bringing in the experts and giving names to everything stops it being mysterious, stops it from truly being a horror and makes it a dark supernatural thriller. And that wouldn't be so bad by itself, but this seems so committed to being what it thinks horror is, it gets kind of annoying.
It doesn't have gore, violence, sex or profanity. But so what? The issue with those kinds of movies was never that they were gory, or sexy or profanyey. it's that they coasted on it rather than actually put some effort in. This removes the gore and replaces it with...same old, same old. Thus it is worse than those other movies because it doesn't even have base pleasure to fall back on.
I get that it could be pretty effective horror for someone who had never seen a horror movie before. I attribute the financial success of this movie to how it baited that section of the audience by including Annabel plus the promise of no gore to get the two-horror-movies-a-year crown into the theatre.
I really don't believe that any type of incorporeal menace would spend any time mocking a human made religion. I don't get why they mess with this family rather than keep a low profile. The motivations of the antagonist just isn't convincing. I hate this movie's trite attempt to be poignant and about family.
As a non-believer, I really have no problem with the supernatural in the horror genre, up to and including the mainstream religions. Hey, maybe I'm wrong! The possibility of my world view turned upside down is scary. But this makes no concessions, it feels more like a sermon than a good religious horror.
Just an annoying movie. I will give it some credit for managing not to be too trashy and it does feel like there was real talent behind the camera.
But ultimately it is not a departure from the generic horror movie. We need to depart from this.