What Paranormal Activity should have been.

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2013)

There are basically 2 types of horror movie; those that rely on lots of blood and gore and those that rely on the simple fact that all of us are still afraid of what we can't see and don't understand.
The Conjuring delivers us those latter fears in spades. This is the first genuinely freaky modern horror film since Insidious, where it's all about fears that are almost impossible to control and forces that are totally impossible to control.
The story starts as an introduction to Ed and Lorraine Warren as paranormal investigators who help people either explain strange occurrences within their homes or debunk assumed spectral activity as nothing more than creaking floors and rattling pipes. They tour various universities giving lectures on their experiences and showing footage of exorcisms they have been involved in and footage of them explaining the otherworldly forces that manifest themselves in everyday objects such as a scary looking doll etc.
We are then introduced to the Perron family, whom the main story is structured around. The family moves in to a new, yet somewhat rundown, two storey farmhouse in Rhode Island in 1971. Reminiscent of other earlier horror movies abound, such as Poltergeist, Amityville Horror or the Exorcist, when strange yet seemingly coincidental or easily dismissed incidents occur, such as the clocks all stopping at the same time, strange offensive odours or the family dog refusing to enter the home and then suddenly dying overnight.
As time goes on incidents become more and more frequent and more eerie. The mother wakes up each morning with new bruises on various parts of her body, the youngest of the 5 daughters ends up having what is at first an imaginary friend that can only be seen in the reflection of a mirror on an old toy, right up to sudden and freaky events such as hanging pictures being torn from the wall and people being locked in rooms etc.
Eventually the mother tracks down the Warrens during one of their lectures and convinces them to come to her home to help them find out what is happening to their family. Needless to say that with the inclusion of paranormal investigators now on the scene, the entity is none too happy about it, so events start to escalate and finally come to a dramatic conclusion once they realise that the mother has become the conduit for the malevolent spirit.
Fans of spooky movies will see nothing new in the Conjuring that they haven't seen in countless other movies of this genre. People being dragged across the floor by their hair, tons of photographic and light sensitive equipment, demonic possession, sudden apparitions, witches curses etc. have all been done before in Poltergeist, Rose Red, Haunting in Connecticut, Paranormal Activity, Insidious and countless others; so what makes The Conjuring worth seeing? The fact that no matter how many times you see a movie like this or how many times you simply know that something is coming, that sharp jolt of instant darkness or helplessness when facing forces that are out to get you and the adrenaline rush it gives a movie goer is why so many people love a good ghost/demon story.
There is very little CGI in the conjuring and it appears that they have gone for proper special effects with effective use of shadow and atmosphere to create something that you don't often see in horror movies these days. The Conjuring is not overly flashy with exceptional effects but gives a definite feeling of dread and it shows that things that go bump in the night can still scare the hell out of you.