Pleasantly surprised

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2014)

In all honesty, I was never inclined at all to watch The Conjuring since most horrors that are massively talked about, mainly by teenagers, seem to almost always let me down, but this was an exception.
In hindsight, I should of been less doubtful as I rate James Wan as an extremely talented director who always seem to pull of scares. I enjoyed Saw and both of the Insidious films so The Conjuring was bound to be at least decent.
First off, I think the sound in this film was fantastic, it created suspense, tension and atmosphere and really made your skin crawl as you watched it. It perfectly suited the cinematography and was timed brilliantly. This was hardly a surprise really, and it did sound similar to the Insidious soundtrack. James Wan has a tendency to use contrapuntal sound and we definitely see this here.
The cinematography is extremely professional and effective, you see clear use of thirds and the different shots and angles were creative. A particular shot that caught my eye a couple of times was the rotation of the camera and upside down shots, these were unusual and interesting as well as a breath of fresh air into cinematography itself. If there was something important needed in the shot, it was always shown and also created plenty of false expectations in the viewer, which were unusually a good thing.
Acting was believable and honest, each character was played perfectly and naturally and there was no cheesy or conventional lines or performances. All actors showed genuine emotion and behaved in a manner that did the story line justice. And of course the story line was relatively impressive too, the story was dark,shocking and held the conventions of horror with interesting and original twists.
I must criticise the use of Annabelle the doll, since it really had little to do with the main story at all, I have heard about the proposed sequel but was there really any need to bring the doll into the equation in this film.
Either way, this film is definitely worth a watch if you want a genuinely scary horror movie and for once is actually based off a true story!