James Wan makes a great movie out of a terribly generic script

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2016)

Even though the exorcism genre is extremely overplayed, The Conjuring stands tall among this overcrowded genre. While it doesn't add anything new to the group, it does a great job building suspense and offers a few genuine scares. The storyline is as bland as they come, a family terrorized by ghosts/demons turns to someone with psychic abilities to fight the demons and ends up needing to perform an exorcism. We've seen this time and time again, but this time James Wan adds some solid nostalgia/style and what I think stood out the most, terrifying sound effects to make the movie something special.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, The Conjuring is the most polished, clichéd, horror movie ever made. It features hardly any original ideas, but it takes a generic storyline and somehow makes it shine, it's crazy to see how effective a movie can be in the hands of a good director. A certain crowd-pleaser, this will probably be the general public's favorite horror movie of recent memory, but certainly not mine.