All conjuring tricks, but no real magic.

Rating: 3/10 (4 August 2013)

As a kid I used to like staying up late to watch those old early-70s TV horror movies like 'The House That Would Not Die' (1970), 'Crawlspace' (1972), 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark' and 'The Night Stalker' (both 1973), 'Trilogy of Terror' (1976; the one with the wee doll chasing Karen Black around) and so on, and 'The Conjuring' (2013) is basically another one of those (it's even set in 1971). Oh, it has a few bells and whistles (like CGI effects and some slick bigger-budget moves) but it's basically cut from the same cloth as some of the more mediocre ones I'd have seen back then (actually, those last three TV movies named are pretty good, and they're up on YouTube too). 'The Conjuring' has a large family moving into a big old haunted house (it's a cool-looking house, BTW) wherein they experience untoward goings-on and soon realise that it's haunted by the spirit of a nasty old witch. Complications follow, and so do a whole bunch of clichés and non-scariness. What's more is that the movie has an annoyingly conservative tone; for instance there is a distinctly pro-Christian stance to the story, to the point that when the evil entity is being vanquished a 'heavenly choir' soundtrack breaks out. I guess that's what happens when the mainstream finally takes notice of independent stuff; they scoop it up, dumb it down and sell it to the masses like it's something new. Ah well, that's the way the cookies crumble.