The Conjuring

[IamLEAM1983]

Taken at face value, The Conjuring doesn't offer much to rock the boat of Gothic Horror conventions. There's a big ol' country house with its nooks and crannies and its spooky basement and the requisite witchy past; there's crucifixes and holy water and girls just shy of their teens being preyed upon by something unseemly. There's obviously a gritty and realistic take on the Ghostbusters, too, as flash-bulb cameras and bells tied to doorknobs substitute neutron rods and proton packs. Instead of four jokesters, we get Warren and Lorraine Harris of Amityville fame (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) on their penultimate case before the Lutz residence. The Perron family is as desperate and frayed as you'd expect, the father (Ron Livingston) and mother (Lili Taylor) standing on opposite ends of the overall receptivity to spooky stuff. They're not Christian, none of their five kids are baptized – yeah.

You get the picture. The thing is, James Wan (the progenitor of the Saw franchise) elevates these boilerplate elements and creates something that's greater than the sum of its parts. So many Anchor Bay and Ghost House productions tend to just etch the threat out so the whole thing remains teen-friendly, whereas what we have here is something that will genuinely cause you to look away. I'm thirty and I covered my eyes with my hand in at least two parts. Keep in mind, however, that I'm a twitchy and jumpy motherfucker. I'm criminally easy to creep out. If I can't convince you that this is the real deal, then consider that this no-frills and CGI-light affair has scared the bejeesus out of the critics, pushing the ratings board to issue an R rating despite the total and complete absence of gore.

That's the kind of PR stunt shock flick directors drooled over, back in the fifties and sixties. “This movie is too scary for your kids! Come and witness the shocking horror!” Well – it's not an exxageration.

Things start calmly enough. Young Family With Dog buys House. Dog refuses to enter House. Youngest finds Witchy Music Box. Dog dies. Youngest plays with New Imaginary Friend. Birds throw themselves in House's windows unexplainably. House plays Clap and Seek with Young Family. House decides to aggressively redecorate.

Then the requisite Stormy Night from Hell unfolds and the initially doubting parents begin to feel seriously threatened. The Warrens get involved and we're treated to something that feels like a brooding, confident, low-fi cousin to Insidious. There's no sprawling stage work, no oooh, spooky camera effects, no obvious computer-enabled trickery. The amount of non-practical shots that required some modeling and texturing can be counted on three fingers. The Conjuring follows the Haunted House formula to a tee, but it does so with so much aplomb that it's hard to feel like you're watching something you've seen about a hundred other times before.

The expected story beats play out in a way that's both absolutely predictable and still largely entertaining – and a lot of that can be credited to the actors. I figured Wilson would have played out his vaguely-techy paranormal researcher to death by now, but he turns in a solid performance as a man who's both an investigator and a concerned husband. Vera Farmiga feels alternately strong and vulnerable as Lorraine Warren, and the absolute show-stopper is Lili Taylor as Carolyn Perron. She plays abject and naked terror perfectly, and the film's climax allows her to push her Tormented and Physically Exhausted Mother of Five routine to its absolute peak. There's hints of The Shining in the climax, requisite nods to the recent years' exorcism-crazy horror culture, but none of these individually derivative elements drag the whole thing down.

If anything, I'd have to give the movie a few negative points for reinforcing tired notions. The idea that baptism is absolutely required to have evil presences excised from your residence is frustrating as you can't help yourself but to empathize with the fictionalized version of the Perron family. The idea that the Harrises are devout Catholics with a pretty serious emphasis on religious iconography that feels a bit musty. Nevermind how one of the movie's scenes contains strong cues suggesting that no amount of believer paraphernalia could save you from a sufficiently motivated spook; they've surrounded themselves with enough crosses to make you think this is actually a symptom of some sort of religious or spiritual insecurity. Warren spends his first few on-site scenes debunking a few manifestations as being a case of creaky basement floorboards and old pipes, only to immediately assume demons are involved once his wife looks ever so slightly disturbed.

The whole of it feels both safe and efficient, played out but not played to death, like an old shirt that's comfortably worn out and that's just found a few novel uses. By the end of the movie, you'll have seen everything you'd expect to see in a movie like this – but you'll more than likely be left wanting to know just what James Wan has in store for his next project.