The Conjuring
IMDB rate: 7,6
Genre: Possession, Haunted House
The next video for my 2013 watching list! I'm a bit late to the party I guess, because every blogger already wrote a review about this movie, but hey, I'm very poor and the cinema is very expensive ;). I quite liked The Conjuring, it was a good movie to watch, BUT I must say that I expected a lot more of it. There's a whole hype about this movie and everyone says how brilliant and scary it is, but personally I thought it just felt like another possession movie. It's a good movie, sure, but to me it wasn't something incredible or something.
In 1971, Carolyn and Roger Perron move their family into a dilapidated Rhode Island farm house and soon strange things start happening around it with escalating nightmarish terror. In desperation, Carolyn contacts the noted paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, to examine the house. What the Warrens discover is a whole area steeped in a satanic haunting that is now targeting the Perron family wherever they go. To stop this evil, the Warrens will have to call upon all their skills and spiritual strength to defeat this spectral menace at it's source that threatens to destroy everyone involved.
When the movie started I was of course very curious about it because I've read so many good reviews about it. People said how refreshing it was and how original it felt. I don't think that a movie needs to be refreshing to be good, it can be good even if you're using stuff that has been used a thousand times already. To me The Conjuring didn't feel like a refreshing movie. It reminded me of movies like Amityville Horror, The Orphanage, Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism. I don't think that it's bad that it looks a lot like those movies, but it's wrong to call it refreshing in that case. It wasn't refreshing, it was just the same concept only put in this movie in a slightly different way.
What I loved about this movie was the beginning, were we see a story about a doll. As you might know, I'm terrified of dolls and I love a good possessed doll movie (there aren't too many of those, unfortunately). I wasn't entirely sure what The Conjuring was about, and seeing this doll made me all excited because The Conjuring is from James Wan, who happens to be the creator of Dead Silence, my all time favorite horror doll movie. I guess I expected a bit of a haunted house story mixed with this doll, but unfortunately we only see this doll in the very beginning and a few seconds halfway through the movie. Fact is, the movie itself isn't about the doll, at all. I was quite sad about this and to me it felt like the doll story was a bit useless. I get it that the story in the beginning was some sort of introduction to Ed and Lorraine, but then halfway through the movie their daughter suddenly sees it? I was a tiny bit confused by this.
The acting is very good. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are both excellent actors for horror movies, and again they carried this role very well. Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor were both excellent too. There were only a few jump-scares and they were quite predictable if you ask me.
What I disliked a bit about this movie was the overuse of so called scary stuff. The doll, the clapping, the sleep walking girl, the girl seeing stuff in her room, the little girl having a imaginary friend, the slamming doors. Sure, these are all scary effects, but together in one movie they seem like one big mess in an attempt to make it scary as hell. There was just too many, and many of them didn't fit together.The scares being used was almost a constant, which made the impact a lot less impressive. It felt to me as if there was a lot left unexplained.
But again, the trailer showed a lot of the scares already, so we know what to expect.
While this review might be slightly negative, I do think it's a good movie. I've seen horror movies far worse than this. But I think that it's a bit overhyped which gave me a lot of expectations for this movie. These expectations weren't fulfilled so I think that made the movie a bit worse for me. If I knew nothing about it I think I would have liked it a bit more. The Conjuring is a good or decent movie, but don't expect something incredibly refreshing because the movie itself is quite standard in my opinion.
My personal rate: 6,5/10
What I disliked a bit about this movie was the overuse of so called scary stuff. The doll, the clapping, the sleep walking girl, the girl seeing stuff in her room, the little girl having a imaginary friend, the slamming doors. Sure, these are all scary effects, but together in one movie they seem like one big mess in an attempt to make it scary as hell. There was just too many, and many of them didn't fit together.The scares being used was almost a constant, which made the impact a lot less impressive. It felt to me as if there was a lot left unexplained.
But again, the trailer showed a lot of the scares already, so we know what to expect.
While this review might be slightly negative, I do think it's a good movie. I've seen horror movies far worse than this. But I think that it's a bit overhyped which gave me a lot of expectations for this movie. These expectations weren't fulfilled so I think that made the movie a bit worse for me. If I knew nothing about it I think I would have liked it a bit more. The Conjuring is a good or decent movie, but don't expect something incredibly refreshing because the movie itself is quite standard in my opinion.
My personal rate: 6,5/10
Just found your blog! Love it so far.
ReplyDeleteVery nice blog !!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you on the Conjuring.
I think it's very conventional as it's based on all the generic horror formulas we have all ever seen.