The Conjuring

"No animal had ever made such sounds. Neither the lions of East Africa nor the angry bulls. At times, it sounded like a veritable herd of wild beasts orchestrated by Satan had formed a hellish choir."

This quote is from a nun describing the horrible nature of a young South African girl named Clara Germana Cele, who was reportedly possessed by a demon in 1906. When thinking of this summer's "The Conjuring," I have pondered my habitual nature as a person who was raised Catholic to fear the Devil. I can remember crying myself to sleep in the first grade after hearing stories in school of how Satan would pull children by the hair to Hell if they were bad. (Appropriate classroom topic for a first grader?) Supposedly, many of the so-called possessions are explained by science as mental disorders; perhaps this was the case with the young South African girl. But despite the scientific skepticism of exorcisms, why bother being skeptical when it can happen to you?

The above thoughts intrigued me. A lot of the other elements of "The Conjuring," however, did not. Compare this movie to last year's super creepy "The Woman in Black." In terms of terror, there is not much of a comparison. One is scary because it tries to be; the other doesn't try hard enough and then tries too hard. Personally, I get scared rather easily. Dark basements? Terrifying. Shadows? Petrifying. Something under the bed? Would rather not look. So utilizing such features in a movie may be scary, but it's not very impressive or innovative. (Anyone can go "boo!"; it doesn't necessarily make you a horror genius.) As Jonah Hill mocked his exorcist in this summer's "This Is the End," when the demon is being compelled to leave the body, "it's not very compelling."

The film's typical horror story is about a family (led by Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston) who move to a quiet (yet terribly eerie) country home that (you guessed it) experienced grim murders.  The couple and their five girls (Shanley Caswell, Hayley McFarland, Joey King, Mackenzie Foy, and Kyla Deaver) start to experience paranormal activities. They include the youngest girl talking to an imaginary friend, and another girl who sleep walks and bangs her head against a closet door; there's an odd, awful stench and a severe chill when things go wrong. Things start to get much worse. During their first night there, the family dog is murdered. Birds start to fly into the house's walls and break their necks. Someone else is clapping along during their hide-and-clap game. The mother wakes up with bruises, and the girls are positively sure that someone else in the room is abusively pulling their legs during their sleep. 

The activity becomes unbearable, so the family has no choice but to seek demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (the real-life couple who investigated the Amityville Horror episode and who are here played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farminga). The investigators conclude that this ain't no case of sleep paralysis or loud pipes. So they go to the house to begin their investigation and plan. Fairly soon, it becomes an all-hands-on-deck approach, with their assistant (Shannon Kook) and (for no explained reason) a cop (John Brotherton) joining them. This is problem number one that I had with "The Conjuring." Instead of picking one paranormal aspect (a demon, a ghost, a witch), this movie assumes that more is more, so all three are included. I couldn't quite follow the story (and wasn't that motivated to try), but there's something about a Salem witch who burned her baby (I think) and then haunted the house (or maybe the demon haunted it) and told inhabitants to murder people, and then a little creepy boy ran away (or something).

Why bother including so much? Wouldn't it have been more effectively horrifying to simply focus on the witch or the demon or the ghost?    

"The Conjuring," especially as it progresses, seems like a duller version of "The Exorcist," almost like an "Exorcism for Dummies"-type of film, particularly with that annoyingly explanatory dialogue.  "Paranormal Activity," four years ago, was also about helpless victims being possessed by hateful demons, and yet that movie brought freshness and novelty that is unfortunately lacking here in "The Conjuring." To say "The Conjuring" is bad would be inaccurate. The actors do a mostly effective job, even though they're provided with such a lame screenplay with lamer dialogue by Chad and Carey Hayes. Director James Wan should be commended for his ability to more or less be on a role (he is also the director of "Saw" and "Insidious") but criticized for not making a particularly scary movie.  With all due respect to Wan, who is probably America's leading horror filmmaker today, his direction reminded me of the famous story regarding Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock claimed that it would be easy for him to make a movie where a group of characters sat around a table and a bomb unexpectedly blew up, thus shocking the audience. But Hitchcock said he would rather direct a movie in which the audience knew there was a bomb under the table, and so the tension was in waiting for it to explode. For Wan's next movie, he should focus on Hitchcock's approach.