This will become a horror classic

Rating: 8/10 (8 July 2013)

I don't want to sound like a shill for the studio but this is the truth. You don't want to wait for this one to hit DVD if you are at all a fan of the genre. The Conjuring relies a lot on things that go bump in the night and do they ever bump. It will lose a lot of its effectiveness on even the best home system. I was reminded a lot of the original Haunting by the loud sounds in the film and how they were used effectively to scare the audience.
Lily Taylor rises above an overall solid cast to play the mother of the haunted family and she really delivers the goods. James Wan has made his best film to date with this solid horror film that hearkens back to the ones best remembered from my childhood, The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, The Haunting, and Poltergeist. Being set in the 70's really helps give it the feel of those haunted house classics.
The movie starts with a nice subplot piece with a couple good scares and then slows down for about a half hour or so of setup before revving up into one hell of a scare fest. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, other than to say it sure made me curious about the work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the investigators in the film that were also involved with the Amityville Horror. Now if the filmmakers will just let this one lie on its own and don't try to milk the idea for a series of films like was done with the other famous Warren case, things will be just about near perfect scary.