Better than AMITYVILLE, not up there with THE EXORCIST

Rating: 7/10 (14 August 2013)

Based, the credits tell us, on a true story, the unhappy house-buying experience of the Perron family in Rhode Island is played as a serious docudrama, not as a piece of hokum, which helps to give the movie some credulity. The two female leads are particularly solid: Lili Taylor as the mother fighting to save her children and Vera Farmiga as the ghost-buster with special "gifts". The make-you-jump moments do what they're supposed to and look more like old-fashioned special effects than over-egged CGI.
There's nothing like an old-fashioned haunted-house movie. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has decided to become another cheesy franchise. THE CONJURING is a cut above THE AMITYVILLE HORROR or the crappy 1999 remake of THE HAUNTING, but no movie is ever going to out-gross (in either sense of the word) THE EXORCIST.