This Wan lacks originality.

Rating: 5/10 (28 January 2018)

James Wan has directed three of the biggest horror hits of the millennium thus far: Saw (2004), Insidious (2010) and The Conjuring (2013). Saw was a wholly original shocker, a twisty-turny torture pic well deserving of its success. Insidious breathed new life into the well-worn supernatural genre with its really freaky atmosphere and well-crafted scares. The appeal of the Conjuring, on the other hand, has me puzzled, the film being little more than a collection of generic clichés borrowed from countless other possession movies.
Purportedly based on a true story from 1971, The Conjuring stars Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren, who are called to the home of the Perron family, who have been experiencing terrifying unexplainable occurrences since recently moving into the old house. A little research reveals that the property had once belonged to a witch named Bathsheba, who killed her child and hung herself, putting a curse on anyone who took her land. After lots of creepy phenomena - moving doors, ghostly apparitions, strange noises etc. - wife and mother of five girls, Carolyn Perron, is possessed by the witch and attempts to sacrifice her youngest daughter, at which point the film switches from a lame facsimile of The Amityville Horror/Poltergeist to an equally lame copy of The Exorcist, with the Warrens trying to cast out the evil spirit.
Stopping just short of a 360-degree head spin, the film really does offer very little new to fans of the genre, even throwing in a creepy doll called Annabelle for good measure (Annabelle would go on to be the subject of a couple of spin-off movies). I guess if you're new to horror, and haven't seen a lot of similarly themed flicks, The Conjuring would seem like a pretty scary ride, but it left me distinctly unimpressed.
4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.