Good Old Fashioned Horror Fest

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2013)

James Wan is a very good director, capable of carrying out an atmospheric piece, with a solid understanding of his material to put us right in the middle of the action and let us have a relatively good time.
Here is a real-life story of a family haunted by evil spirits. The question is whether they will be able to survive the ordeal, and why is this case so special to a couple o the best demonologists in the United States in 1971? We do find out after a tight exposition in which little by little the family suffers through different manifestations of the evil entity. The young girls are tormented every night as the clock stops at exactly 3:07 a.m., and soon, their mother is plagued by a series of physical ailments that can be tied to nothing good. The crisis intensifies as children disappear, and the spirits of the ghosts start manifesting themselves in terrifying ways.
With the help of excellent art decoration, we are surrounded by a house that looks like it has lived through some serious demonic occupation. It looks damaged, destroyed, tired, in addition to terribly scary. You know anyone with some common sense should stay from it, and we start wondering why it is that these people do not remove themselves soon enough. They get their first warning as one of their family members is attacked earlier in the film, but through a logical but quite so understandable excuse, they are forced to stay.
Everyone actor in the movie is wonderful. With Lily Taylor playing a nonsensical but loving mother who sees her world shatter slowly and painfully, as each of her beautiful daughters is exposed to more psychological and physical torture. The apparition themselves help enhance the mood, as we see decay and destruction, and soon, with the help of some research, we learn the origin of all these ghosts and their reasons for causing such havoc.
In the last third of the movie, the film takes on some spiritual and religious overtones, and it will all depend on how you view these themes, but you are bound to be compelled to look at the fight with good and evil, and it is quite remarkable how much new special effects can simulate realism of this type. The exorcism in the last part of the film is violent and quite intimidating. This is no quite "The Exorcist" a perfect blend of different genres and almost letter perfect direction and craftmanship, but it reaches high and delivers some good and strong old fashioned thrills and chills.