HK Auteur Review - The Conjuring

Rating: 8/10 (1 September 2013)

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse.
The fact that The Conjuring is based on a true story is competently incorporated into the film's design. James Wan takes his time with his world creation and properly sets up a believable reality. These characters act like real people. Most people wouldn't be quick to jump to the conclusion that their house is haunted and it would realistically take a while for a family to seek help. I couldn't spot anybody making stupid horror movie mistakes. The initial scares did not scare me, but step-by-step the scares put me into the world. As I understood the science and how these ghosts worked, my mental defenses begun to weaken and I began dreading the scares.
Wan uses every trick in the book for the scares, but they are effectively scary. Judging it from a pure horror film fan's view, the design of the scares by themselves are probably not that fresh. But it's genetically encoded together with the story in such a way that if you were to show one of the film's scary sequences on Youtube to a friend, the actual scare will be dampened without the context of the story.
The best thing The Conjuring achieves is that it properly balances the horror movie genre elements with its dramatic portions. It does so by focusing on Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are fascinating larger-than-life characters and are the heart of the story. Watching the paranormal investigators set up their ghost hunting equipment and explaining how ghosts behave was equally entertaining as any of the film's fright sequences. Where in a typical horror movie that will rely on its scares to entertain the audience, The Conjuring has an interesting real-life story and characters that we can not only be scared by, but also speculate and ponder long after the scares are over. The Warrens are the X factor what will unite horror film fans and a typical movie goer to enjoying this movie on multiple levels. I immediately Googled the Warrens after seeing the film and read about their other real-life paranormal investigations. I am glad the studio has decided to make a sequel with Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga playing these characters again.
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