Director: James Wan
Release Date: July 19th, 2013 (US); August 2nd, 2013 (UK)
Genre: Horror; Thriller
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston
After months of heightened anticipation built up through posters and trailers, The Conjuring hit cinema screens accompanied by scares more in tune with a series of pithy jabs rather than any fully blown knockouts. Even though it does hit the mark on a number of elements, the film is deceivingly weak on the horror side of things.
Set in the early 1970s, The Conjuring is based on a case undertaken by real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. It relays the events the husband and wife pair experience as they attempt to assist the Perron family in ridding their new Rhode Island home of an evil presence.
Directed by the imaginative and twisted mind behind horror hits Saw and Insidious, James Wan, The Conjuring surprisingly relies heavily on drawn out sequences of tension-mounting silence. So much so that by the fifth time the spike in music arrives to signal a scare, the impact is lost on the viewer. In fact, any potential hair-raising moments brought upon through tension have already been screened in the trailer. The objective of any horror film is to frighten its audience, but there are other ways to do so as opposed to relentless attempts at jump-scaring (that is, solely depending on giving the audience a momentary and sudden fright). In fact the few times The Conjuring does deviate from this and instead opts for creepy imagery, it works very well and evokes that sense of fear and dread every horror film should strive for.
Another problem The Conjuring faces is the moments of incomprehensible decision-making by some of its characters. There is something about walking into a dark room which seconds before boasted a demented-looking ghost spewing eerie dialogue that does not exactly scream out as the most sensible option for somebody to take. This is not an obstacle exclusive to The Conjuring though, and is often an unfortunate nuance found in other horror films every year.
However, even when taking the aforementioned concerns into consideration, The Conjuring is still a very well-crafted, aesthetically on point film. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson star as the Warren family and strike up a well-oiled dynamic as the piece progresses. Both are enjoyable to watch and Farmiga in particular stands out as an anxious-yet-determined mother and investigator who has suffered some sort of psychological attack, and who also holds the safety of her daughter close to her heart. Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor play the heads of the Perron family and both do a more-than-adequate job as a slightly sceptical father and an utterly confused and worried mother, respectively.
James Wan has a tremendous eye for developing encapsulating visuals, as proven in his previous work. This time, everything from the Amityville-like house which looks and sounds like it could collapse into a pile of wood within seconds, to the wonderfully hideous make-up splattered across the ghoulish faces of the demons, adds to the somewhat diminished fear-factor the film possesses. The very short and ominous title sequence also deserves a mention, as the blend of screeching instrumentals and a menacing yellow text font provide an introductory chill worthy of a scarier film. Wan does capture the essence of most of the essentials needed to create a fully-fledged horror spectacle, but disappointingly misses out on consistent spooks.
It is probably true that The Conjuring has fallen victim to too much hype (an account “too disturbing to be told”) and it also places too many of its eggs in one basket as far as focusing on the true story element of the film goes. Otherwise, it ticks all of the boxes required to be an entertaining film and it succeeds on the few occasions James Wan does get the horror aspect correct.
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