The late Ed and Lorraine Warren were a controversial pair that either investigated actual hauntings around America or were a pair of scammers who tricked the gullible. Regardless of the veracity of their claims, they have been the subject of many horror movies that all claim to be “based on true events”.
My space here isn’t to debate whether or not what they did was on the level. Instead, I’m here to talk about The Conjuring, in which Patrick Wilson and Vera Farminga play the Warrens, and that movie treats the case in-universe as real, so that’s how I intend to play it.
After an opening scene that introduces the audience to the most famous off-shoot of the Conjuring universe, namely Annabelle the doll, we see the Perron family moving into a new home. The family dog doesn’t want to come inside, but the parents (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) and their five daughters are all happy to be there. But strange things start happening. There’s a basement they didn’t know about, strange knockings, one daughter starts sleepwalking, something she hadn’t done in a while, and the dog soon ends up dead. The house seems to be haunted by a very malevolent figure, so they reach out to the Warrens. Psychic Lorraine thinks there’s something in the house as soon as she walks in the door while her demonologist husband is a bit wary of taking her on a case after an incident that happened in a previous case.
As it turns out, the house is haunted by a particularly malevolent spirit named Bathsheba. In life, Bathsheba committed a rather vile act against her own child, and her ghost likes to keep that habit up whenever a new family moves into her old home. Given how much Ed cares for Lorraine and both try to protect their own young daughter, the stakes are every bit as personal for the two of them as it is for the Perrons.
Director James Wan cut his teeth on horror movies, and by the time he got to The Conjuring, he displayed the ability to play the genre like a violin. In terms of what happens, this is a very standard haunted house movie. There are a lot of odd noises, confusion among the family that eventually leads to fear and terror, and the residents are desperate to, at least, if not rid the house of Bathsheba than to at least get the family away safely. The opening Annabelle story doesn’t factor in much to the main plot so much as it both demonstrates Wan’s mastery of the genre as well as explain who Ed and Lorraine are and what they do, ending with Annabelle being placed in their basement full of possessed items. Annabelle’s impact on what happens isn’t as much, but the film does establish the doll is a bit different from most of the items in the Warrens’ basement and shows how skilled the Warrens are at helping people through supernatural problems.
And that more than anything else is what sets The Conjuring apart from other movies. It is a very standard story, but it’s told exceptionally well. Wan’s pacing may set up jumpscares, often the laziest of horror cliches, but done right they are incredibly effective. For example, it doesn’t matter how much I know it’s coming, but that head missing an eyeball in Jaws still creeps me out every time I see the movie. The Conjuring works the same way. We see the characters, whether oblivious to what’s happening or not, doing things until some big thing jumps out to scare them and the audience, and it really works. As with most horror, the more the audience gets to know what’s happening, the less scary it may be, but by then, Wan has invested enough into the Warrens and Perrons to make their plights something to care about. And quite frankly, Lili Taylor can do some great faces as either someone scared out of her mind or as the victim of a possession. I may not be the biggest fan of horror, and I hate jumpscares, but when it works, it works very well. And in The Conjuring, it works.
Grade: A-
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