Conjuring the cheese

Rating: 2/10 (12 February 2014)

In my 8 years of being an IMDb member I never wrote a review, even less a rant. However after watching The Conjuring I was compelled to express why I disliked it so much. It's pretty bad as a viewer when a horror movie isn't able to bring you into its world because it makes all the twists and scares feel ineffective. There are several reasons why I felt that way while watching this, even though I've been wanting to see it for some time now.
One of its main problems is the abuse of the constant build-ups that stretch out for long minutes and lead absolutely nowhere. These come one after the other and make up a big part of the movie's runtime. It's very hard to make a climatic build up that actually stands out, and this movie doesn't get it right even once.
When the movie is not building up pointless scenes, it throws you a scene involving the one dimensional ghostbusters who have a traumatic past experience which is terribly uninteresting. The acting for those characters are pretty bad, but that's in part for the complete emptiness of the lines which written to have a very specific meaning, mostly to show you how good and honest they are.
It's kind of amazing to me how many critics have hyped up a movie like this while giving sh*t to a director such as Shyamalan, which even at his worst can display a much better handle of tension in one simple shot than this movie can throughout its entire length. I don't mind people liking this, however if you are looking for a horror movie capable of being intriguing in the traditional way, don't be fooled by the marketing: The Conjuring isn't able to find one single reason to stand out from the mud.