K-SCORE: 42
Director: James Wan
“The idea that we should be looking at the executed girls in Salem as actual witches somehow manages to stay objectionable even centuries after those incidents.”
Writer: Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson
Spoiler Level: Minor
For a haunted house film with a premise hardly any different from The Exorcist, The Conjuring is adequate. The house is packed with people so the film doesn’t rely on lone slow walks down the hallways for jump-scares. Also, every character can see paranormal disturbances and there aren’t teams of believers and teams of skeptics, both of which are usually genre staples. Such small adjustments help keep this haunted house horror film fresh when other films tackling the same subject have become so stale, but it’s the scares themselves that are the best part. A few are truly original and they come very frequently so The Conjuring bypasses much of the usual boredom. There’s only so much tiptoeing in a bath towel you can take before you pull out your phone and look for something more engaging.
All that said, I can’t say I was ever frightened. I wasn’t staying up afterwards seeing shapes in my house, nor was I burying my head in my hands. I was entertained by the creepiness. It could be that I have a suspension of disbelief issue though, since this never happens to me.
Even with crediting the strides The Conjuring takes towards creating a more interesting product, nothing excuses the way the filmmakers try to make you believe it was a true story. Don’t do research on the subject and the people it’s based on unless you want to be infuriated that they manipulated you. The real life paranormal investigators claim it was real, but the premise is that a witch from Salem is tormenting a family on her land. The idea that we should be looking at the executed girls in Salem as actual witches somehow manages to stay objectionable even centuries after those incidents. Hundreds of years ago a puritanical society decided to execute a few lying adolescent girls because of unfounded paranoid beliefs. Now people are simply capitalizing on unfounded paranoid beliefs to sell movie tickets. Progress!
The wholly unethical approach to this film’s creation and marketing, and the entire profession of these parasitic malicious spirit “detectives” blights a film that is really only mediocre to begin with.