It's all been done before, but it all still works

Rating: 7/10 (23 September 2013)

James Wan merrily continues to reinvigorate the horror genre to great effect in this spooky possession type scary flick. Though 'reinvigorate' may be said too much, as The Conjuring is driven by trite but true scare effects that have literally been employed thousands of times already. Nevertheless, Wan makes them work as if there's still a sense of novelty to them. Supposedly based on true events – with the end credits providing the necessary pictures to back up that statement – The Conjuring follows the married Warren couple specialized in demonology and paranormal investigations, which is confronted by the most shocking case of their already illustrious career. The Perron family recently moved to an old provincial house on Rhode Island, where they have been plagued by bizarre occurrences ever since their arrival, which swiftly seem to take increasingly aggressive turns. Doors slam shut on their own accord, unexplained sounds are heard everywhere, the dog died a mysterious death (even though it never even dared to enter the house) and their daughters are harassed and assaulted by unseen assailants all night long. With the balanced help of both hard science and religious ritualism, the Warrens discover the presence of several ghosts of folks that have died horrible deaths in the house over time (some of them actually sympathetic), the cause of which is a satanic presence with an appetite for child murder that won't let go of the Perrons until the blood of their girls has been shed. To put an end to this terror the Warrens must call on all their experience and lots of luck to get everyone involved, including themselves and their own kid, out of this gruesome mess alive. Naturally the evil spirit won't make it so easy for them. A synopsis like this reads like a repetition of narrative elements and age old horror themes that have been done to death. It cannot be denied that it is just that, and so are the effects Wan utilizes to scare the bejesus out of his audience. Surprisingly, it all works great nonetheless. Maybe it's his sense of timing (there's many a moment of small shocks followed by silence, which itself is shattered by a big shock), his careful employment of efficient, mood setting lighting and editing techniques, or maybe it's the convincing performances delivered by his cast, with Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson making ghostbusting exorcists feel plausible and compelling. It's probably the whole. Despite this movie's failure to come up with wholly new concepts to the horror genre, instead embracing all the clichés people have come to associate withe the genre, The Conjuring proves a genuine scarefest from beginning to end, guaranteed to oblige both regular viewers out for an evening of thrills and die-hard horror lovers who gave up on Hollywood's tactics ages ago. Hopefully this movie will stay a standalone film, instead of soon being the victim of rapid enfranchisement as happened all too easily to Wan's Saw – to detrimental plot effects, though unfortunately not so much in terms of box office– which currently also seems to be the case with Insidious, to which Wan just released a sequel as well (it's a fruitful year for him apparently). The Conjuring is a good old-fashioned horror film which brings to mind all the similarly themed classics of old (though of course not getting anywhere near the shock level of, say, The Exorcist), but shouldn't be exploited ad infinitum as some of Wan's other movies have been, for its own benefit. You can only be reminded of how creepy a door can be so many times before the feeling of dread is getting stale.