The Conjuring (2013)

Directed by: James Wan
Written by: Chad Hayes, Carey Hayes
Starring: Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson
Rated: R

For my money the most important rule to remember when making a horror film is to let the audience scare themselves. Sure, copious amounts of makeup and gratuitous fake blood may get a reaction out of an audience, but is it horror? Less is more, as rising horror auteur James Wan ("Saw", "Insidious") shows us in his best picture to date. Let the people sitting in the audience fill in what's lurking in the shadows and knocking on the doors and let them do the work for themselves.

Inspired by the true events of top paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren, "The Conjuring" tells the story of the Perron family who move into a house filled with angry spirits dating back to the Salem Witch Trials. Taking no small amount of inspiration from "Poltergeist", "The Amityville Horror", "The Exorcist" and "Paranormal Activity", Wan's movie is nevertheless a terrific addition to a great line of films about haunted houses and demonic possession with a few inventive twists of its own.

Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor play Roger and Carolyn who are the parents of the five little girls who have just moved into a spacious, secluded country home. A ho-hum family deserving of a white picket fence, they fit just right into the target audience of spooks and specters. It begins with stopping clocks and mysterious bruises, escalating to doors opening on their own and phantom voices targeting certain family members. Of course they dismiss them initially (Carolyn convinces herself that her bruises are the result of an iron deficiency), most people don't usually jump to supernatural conclusions, but soon the occurrences are too extreme to ignore.

This is the scariest film I have seen in years, and it came just in time for me. I was beginning to lose faith in horror as a genre, it all having devolved into gore-fests and found footage fiascoes. With a wink and a nod to 70's fright flicks, "The Conjuring" taps right back into the roots of what frightens us all: the unknown. For a solid hour the dread mounts relentlessly to the point that several people actually left the theater. Those moments when people stop eating their popcorn and hold that collective breath are the reason I go to the movies. Wan had us all wrapped around his little pinky finger.

A small reprieve introduces us to the Warren's (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), the just-in-time clairvoyants and ghost hunters come to save the family. Farmiga's character would be eye-roll worthy did she not play it with such conviction. Actually the whole cast played their parts strongly, and coupled with the "true events" opening and closing blurbs it did lend a sense of gravity to the whole situation. The Warren's dealt with thousands of cases, most of concluded with simple scientific explanations, but as the opening tells us this case was the most malevolent, undisclosed to the public until now.

Just the right amount of special effects, very little blood and gore, a nice, creeky house, and the scariest doll it has ever been my displeasure to see are assembled in just the right way to pack the maximum punch. Wan's framing and his usage of space and sound are commendable; he created the right atmosphere with the right story.

I think a solid ghost story that doesn't feel the need to rely on cheap gimmicks always works because it reaches into the backs of our minds and drags out what scares us most. As kids we hate the dark in the same way we fear empty houses as adults. The possibility of what lurks in the shadows is far scarier than what is actually there. For me it was always a ventriloquist dummy under my bed or in that empty hallway or hiding behind the shower curtain. Every groan of my house's foundation was the doll entering my room. Wan's echoing house full of secrets and hidden recesses had that dummy's eyes staring back at me through the black and it scared the hell out of me.

3.5/4