"You did good!" "No, you did!" - The Conjuring

Rating: 3/10 (2 December 2019)

(3 out of 10 stars, very minor spoilers only)
To my shock, this is exactly what the Warrens say to each other at the end of this movie after everything is over. Without a bit of irony to it. As if they had just rescued a cat from a tree and not performed a ridiculously over-the-top exorcism. It is probably also what James Wan and his screenwriter said to each other, when they finished making this film.
Unfortunately, they did not!
Instead, they served us this overly long, sub-standard and by-the-book haunted-house-movie (based of course on a true story, yaaawn...) that is bloated by unnecessary side plots and filled to the brim with jump scares and stupid decisions from the film's characters. Worse of all, the movie fails to deliver on its main purpose: it is not scary.
The film suffers from a lot of over explanation. It starts already with the unnecessary opening sequence about the two dim-witted nurses that invite an evil spirit to possess the Anabelle Doll (well, sequels and spin-offs need to be seeded early on, right?). During the film, all the characters keep describing what they see and do which takes a lot away from the tension and is just, well, boring. On top of that, we are bombarded with pages of text, informing us that the Warrens are real-life-characters and that the depicted events are all so true. This is intended to up the believability and the scariness but it is just annoying.
For 1,5 hours, the moviemakers keep flooding the viewer with all available horror clichés. If you just a little well-versed in haunted-house films, you have seen it all. We have a remote house whose previous owners suffered a terrible fate. Only this time, they kind of multiply this device. There is a witch, a girl who committed suicide on the orders of someone, dead children, a woman who hang herself... I have to admit that I kind of lost track, because I did not care. Somehow, they all come back to haunt the family, though to me, it is never clear, what exactly they want. Only the dog senses that there is something wrong and - you guessed it - ends up dead. We have creepy children's toys. Hidden cellars. Spaces in between the walls. Loads of cobweb. Children's games (hide and seek in a haunted house, anyone?). Whispers. Sleepwalking. Birds, lots of them. I cannot be bothered to list all the tropes; others have done it already.
To make it worse, the director relies heavily on jump scares. Only, you see all of the coming from miles away, so they do not work. We hear weird noises, doors keep opening and closing on their own, people keep suddenly appearing, it is just all so tiresome.
There is no mystery as, right from the start, you know that the dead people are somehow still there and up to no good. The characters even talk about it all the time.
Wan and his writer keep weaving in all these additional characters, when it is already impossible to keep all the daughters of the family apart. The throwaway cop, the useless assistant, the Warren's maid and their daughter. Give me a break, the movie is already confusing enough.
With the Warrens moving in, they go all Home-Alone on the ghosts, with their camera booby traps and microphones. This is de-mystifying to a degree, it is kind of funny.
To complain about how stupid the characters behave would be crying over spilled milk. It might seem like we have to get used to this behavior in modern horror films, but I am just not willing to accept it. When you see a dead girl's ghost with slit wrists in a very dark room, whispering "Look what you made me do...", what would you do? Well, our throwaway cop decides to run right towards her. This is very exemplary for how the characters in this film act.
The finale is just so over the top, it is ridiculous. A lot of screaming and people flying through the air. It was really, well, boring.
I think this film made me realize that I just do not like haunted movies. I just keep wondering what these ghosts want. Why do they always slowly but gradually start to terrorize our heroes without harming them, opening and closing doors and doing all their boo-stuff. Why can they not just do their job and kill everybody right away, if this is what they want? Maybe they just want to see people suffer in the process. Well, I guess James Wan is my haunting ghost then.
Final question: Did anyone notice any conjuring in the movie?