Things go a'bump in the night; old school ho-hum

Rating: 5/10 (25 July 2013)

"The Conjuring" has Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the famed demonologists and paranormal investigators who have had terribly polarizing careers. This film focuses on their dealing of a case in 1971 in which a family is terrorized by evil forces in their Rhode Island farmhouse. What can I say? The teaser trailer for this film hooked me. It was nerve-wracking and different. Unfortunately, the rest of the film didn't entirely pan out that way— but before you get ahead of yourself, no, it's not that bad of a film. It's actually really well-made.
While the legitimacy of Ed and Lorraine Warren and the purported hauntings they investigated are questionable to say the least, I'm going to leave the reality of everything aside and just focus on the film as it's presented. It is billed as being "Based on a true story", which is apparently true of just about every horror movie released today, but it is at least partially true; there really was a family who claimed to have experienced events along the lines of this, and Ed and Lorraine Warren really did investigate it; I can only assume the writers took some hefty liberties provided the dramatic last act of the film.
The direction is great and moody. James Wan, who rose to fame almost immediately with "Saw", toys with old school supernatural horror conventions and levels moodiness with jump scares, keeping an even level of both which generates a great deal of tension. The cinematography is in accordance with the film's dreary atmosphere, but maintains the glossy finish of a high-budget production rather than going for grain. The set design here is also very nice, and, as a period piece, the film has an authentic '70s feel to it.
Another particularly strong point of the production is its actors— the four adult leads are respected performers with ranges that go beyond what's typically necessary in the horror genre, and thus, if anything, their presences in the film elevate what could have potentially been supernatural horror fodder had it been in the wrong hands. Wilson and Farmiga are perfect choices for Ed & Lorraine Warren, and Taylor and Livingston give incredibly natural performances (aside from Taylor's very unnatural possession scene at the end of the film, but that's on the writers' hands).
What then, do say, is the ho-hum about? I mean, look— a witch having cursed your land, her ghost and all of her victims' ghosts haunting the house, possessions, flying crucifixes, levitation, Satanism, nooses, children with imaginary friends who are actually ghosts— you see what I'm getting at here? The truth is that all that makes up the plot of "The Conjuring" is so terribly contrived that it makes the film edge upon boring. Perhaps it's not necessarily the fault of the filmmakers if they were simply adapting the testimony of the people who claim to have experienced these things, but the film jam packs about every supernatural horror trope that you could possibly think of into its narrative, and, as a result of that, becomes a bit of a retread. It plays with all the things we've seen before time and again, and for that reason I found the film a bit of a letdown, at least narratively; there have been a multitude of films based upon cases that the Warrens investigated, namely "The Amityville Horror" and "The Haunting in Connecticut", and both of these films bear striking similarities in content to "The Conjuring". I would be more forgiving of this if the film had clearly set out to be some sort of throwback to '70s horror, but the high production values and overall mis-en- scene do not suggest this, so it at times lost my complete attention.
Ultimately, I'm very divided on "The Conjuring". There are some splendidly tense scenes, the acting is fantastic, and the film is by all means very well-made, but its contents make it come off as a conglomeration of conventionality. If you go in with this in mind, "The Conjuring" might potentially be more enjoyable, but for someone who expected something a bit "outside the box", I didn't get that at all; although "The Conjuring" is very well-made and at times quite creepy, it is by-the-books in about every way possible, yet has the attitude that it isn't at all. 5/10.