The Conjuring- Good Good

Since our class is focusing on horror movies, I decided to review the film The Conjuring, directed by James Wan, a horror movie based on a real life supernatural case called the Warren Case. It is about a 1970 farmhouse in Rhode island where Roger and Carolyn Perron and their five daughters were allegedly terrified and and possessed by evil spirits. The movie has 2 story lines, the lives of the Perron family and the lives of the Warren family. The Warrens are Ed and Lorraine Warren, with their daughter Judy. They are American paranormal investigators and authors associated with prominent cases of hauntings and Lorraine has special abilities to help connect with the spirits. In the film, they are convinced by Carolyn to look at her house after a lecture on what they do by stating "I have five daughters who are scared to death and I'm afraid this thing is going to hurt us" so they agreed and drove to Rhode island to investigate the Perron's house, even though Lorraine's last investigation scarred her for life because the exorcism did not go as planned and after she went in her room and didn't come out for 8 days without eating or drinking. When they arrived at the house, they automatically felt an evil presence and all the occurrences were traced to demonic entities. Lorraine first saw the dark entity when she walked inside the house, behind the family, and also saw many other spirits. Because of this, they needed to preform an exorcism on the house, meaning they had to collect paranormal activities on camera to show to the church and get them to approve and execute the exorcism. Ed hires two men to help set up and record the different rooms and they put bells on each door and connected thermostats to the camera so when the temperature dropped, the camera would take a picture. Each day of the investigation, they got more and more evidence of the haunting, until the last day, one of the daughters began to trigger the camera while walking up the stairs because the ghost was with her, she then walked into a room and the door slammed shut. Ed and Roger were trying to break in but the door was locked and when it finally opened, she was not in there. They then used a heat lamp to check for foot and hand prints which he found going into the wardrobe in the room and then on the wall in the back. He slid the wall open to find her passed out in the crevice of the wall. Lorraine then went in to check for spirits when she suddenly falls through the floor. She survives the fall to find herself in the cellar, where she sees an evil mother killing her child and she up the stairs and then comes to the realization that the witch is trying to possess the mother to kill her children for the devil. Before they could get the exorcism authorized, the mother took two of her daughters from the hotel they were staying in back to their house, so they raced back to the house in the nick of time to stop Carolyn from stabbing her daughter and tried to bring her to the church but the witch would kill her if they left the house. They brought her back in the cellar and  tied her down to a chair with cloth over her. Ed realized he had to do the exorcism himself so he grabbed the bible and holy water but the witch was too powerful and levitated to the ceiling and fell and broke the chair. She then ran away to find her daughter and when she did, right before she killed her, Lorraine grabbed her head and reminded her of a nice day on the beach that she told her about before. The mother then threw up blood and was released by the witch and it was sent to hell.
 
The Conjuring is the 5th highest-grossing rated R horror movie of all time, making $137.4 million in the Box Office and over $319 million worldwide with a $20 million budget. This made critics love it and another reason why it's a great movie. James Wan is a great horror director who understands how to build tension and suspense to make the movie scarier. The movie also looks great with lots of low-key lighting and the shot angles only show what the director wants us to see, which also adds tension. He also uses minimal CGI and great makeup to make the movie even scarier. As the movie progressed, you experience more and more scares that get more powerful and creates more suspense. The atmosphere was extremely creepy because of the scary makeup and different sounds. All actors gave very good performance and made the story much more believable and scary and when the characters look scared, we believe them. The use of cameras and bells to catch the ghosts were also very helpful to build suspense and tension because it lets the audience know that something is there which helps the story line. Most of the scares in the movie are created by the fear of the unknown and in some of the shots, it first shows us the characters reactions to what they are seeing, and then show the audience after. The film does has quite a slow buildup, but it helps build the tension while still scaring you and giving you evidence of the haunting. For example, one of the scariest scenes is when Carolyn and one of her daughters were playing "clap and seek" where one person has to find the other while blindfolded and they only have 3 claps to find them. When she is looking, she walks into a bedroom and asks for her last clap. The doors to the antique wardrobe slowly open and two hands come out of the clothes and clap. She walks towards the wardrobe and puts her hands in to check if she was in there, but there was no one there. She then gets spooked out herself and takes the blindfold off, looking into the empty wardrobe and her daughter runs into the room and tells her "you lose! You took your blindfold off". This scene is so scary because the audience knows that her daughter is not in the wardrobe but Carolyn does not. This movie has very few flaws, making it a Good Good movie.