Genuine creeps are back again....

Rating: 8/10 (4 August 2013)

The Conjuring is one of the most genuinely creepy films to have come in a very very long time.James Wan had shown sparks of brilliance in the horror department in Insidious and Dead silence(which is surprisingly underrated) but here he goes full throttle to horrify the viewers with every trick up in his sleeve.
Right from the opening credits, this movie has a "been there,seen that" feeling but startles you with its effective simplicity.With such aplomb does it showcases its moments of scares, that you clap when the ghost claps, you hide when something unexpected is going to be revealed, and most importantly, you feel what the victims in the family are going through.The film starts rather slowly and takes time to build up but as the supernatural occurrences start to happen,the thrill gets to you and you cannot but be at the edge of your seat and occasionally even jumping out of your seat.Yes,there are quite a few dare-scare moments which have been placed very well in the movie with good build up to them in the form of scenes portraying deep emotions and some scenes evoking laughter as well.
It takes quite a doing when you have to recreate a bygone era in a horror film and more so, since the odds have been against recent filmmakers who have failed in the recent past to provide a genuinely good horror film employing all techniques they could like shaky-cams and torture-porn to titillate the viewer's senses.But James Wan aided by superb camera-work and sound design goes old-school this time which works in his favour as the imagery and the build up sets you up for some genuine scares as in the classic horror films just that here James uses some deft camera-work to make the frightening moments like you have never seen before. The principal cast scores well with sound performances from Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson(James' favorite horror actor) as the paranormal investigators and sympathetically effective ones from Lili Taylor and Ron Livingstone as the Perron family experiencing the increasingly disturbing events in their newly bought farmhouse.
Entertaining to the core, and frightening as hell- this movie is my Hollywood movie of the summer and makes me believe that there is still some hope in the classic horror genre.Hope that "Insidious-II", James' next project establishes that and continues the genre revival.