The Conjuring involves real-life supernatural investigators

The Conjuring involves real-life supernatural investigators

James Wan arrived on the horror scene in 2004 with the original Saw, but while the Jigsaw killer continued through six trap-happily tortuous sequels,
Wan himself largely left gore behind in his own follow-up projects. Dead Silence channelled the ventriloquist dummy scares of the likes of Dead Of Night, The Twilight Zone and Magic,

while Insidious riffed on the haunted house. But where the latter veered off into the loonier territory of further dimensions and string-puppet demons,

The Conjuring is a more straight-ahead take on well-worn ghost story tropes. It’s at once eerily familiar and devastatingly effective.
It would feel like Wan drawing a classy line under the horror phase of his career (he’s off to direct Fast & Furious 7 next) if Insidious:
Chapter 2 were not due shortly afterwards.

“Based on a true story” (of course),The Conjuring involves real-life supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren,
who were involved in the Amityville saga (and were convinced it wasn’t a hoax).

Like 1979’s The Amityville Horror and its many sequels, imitators and progenitors,
Wan’s film sees a family (the Perrons; cry for them) moving into a new old home in which various historical traumas — child murders, witch trials — are manifesting as spooky phenomena.
The Conjuring fills its exhausting run-time with a cauldron of stirred echoes from any number of its similarly-themed predecessors:
a period 1970s setting;
doors that open and close on their own; things under the bed; a dog that won’t enter the house; crawl spaces; a cellar;
a doll; a music box; ghosts; possessions; exorcisms;
secrets uncovered.
Even the bird-strike set-piece has unfortunately already been seen this year,
in the inferior Dark Skies (with which The Conjuring shares composer Joseph Bishara). อ่านต่อ