THE CONJURING

The Conjuring is hardly a revolution in the realm of horror, relying heavily on short-handed cues for a familiar run through a haunted house story, yet it works better than most thanks to James Wan’s skillful use of old tricks. It brings little new to the genre, but plays with our anticipations and delivers on the bottom line. If it’s a good scare you want, The Conjuring delivers in spades.

            There is, to be sure, an air of authenticity to the film and it’s fitting enough for what Wan is aiming for. Believe or not in the explanation that the movie puts forth about the events contained within, that malevolent spirits in an old abandoned house in Harrisville, Rhode Island terrorized the resident family, this is one of the few horror movies honest about its claim to be based on a true story. For that matter, so is The Amityville Horror.  What is certain about that case is that the DeFeo son went berserk and massacred six of his family members. But the wild allegations spun by the Lutz family after their move into the house have widely been written off as a hoax.

            Before their claim to fame with the Amityville case Lorraine and Ed Warren (played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson), who have been called frauds before, did investigate the haunting of the Perron family in 1971. Take this movie as a prequel if you will.

Inevitably, the story has met with skeptics but the surviving members of the Perron family have stuck to their account and have stood behind this movie. But this preface will matter little to those who go to The Conjuring in search of a good scare. It’s a well put together film with an unusual poignant subtext regarding family unity overcoming evil, even of the supernatural kind.

During the movie’s development Wan was undecided about where to shift his attention, the Warrens or Perrons. He ended up finding a good balance and by the end two families are made stronger by demonic spirits.

The Warrens have been haunted by an exorcism turned unexpectedly violent years earlier and Lorraine has never fully recovered. Nonetheless, they choose to keep bewitched items taken from each investigation in their cellar. Maybe because they delve into the afterlife for a living they harbor a death wish? On their end, the Perrons seem to have always been a close family as far as movie families go and even find a spot for their pouty teenage daughter. 

Wan has a keen eye for human drama, making his next project, taking over the seventh Fast & Furious movie after Justin Lin backed out, an anomaly but hopefully he can bring something more profound than the brotherhood of drag racers to the franchise.  Here he bases the terror against the Perron family dynamics and observes how they function as a nuclear unit. Carolyn (Lili Taylor) is the center of the family and holds them together. Her devotion to her husband and daughters is captured in a brief but very revealing flashback to their happier days running free on the beach.

In the real world the verdict is still out on the Warrens. Wan is not above manipulating our attitudes toward them; there is a clear push to sympathize with their hope of finally finding a non-skeptical reporter in a quasi-frame story and we are encouraged to join them in laughing off the ‘kook’ label. But Wan is sincere about his trust in them as, indeed, is the real Lorraine Warren, who still offers tours of her cellar full of purportedly possessed souvenirs. Ed is concerned about his wife’s emotional state since the last exorcism and the pending one and Wan convinces us we should be as well. If such a thing as sincere manipulation could exist, Wan has found it here.

For his scares, Wan reaches into an old bag of stock tricks, but he knows how to use anticipation as a tool. If the look of the decaying house isn’t enough to send shivers up our spines from the start, then we know evil lurks inside when the family dog, like all movie pets, refuses to go inside. Animals are always the first to sense the presence of wickedness in movies and, ironically, the first to go. And so, when the dog is left outside overnight we know it won’t live to see the dawn.

Children are the most susceptible to detecting unearthly evil after animals but they never seem to be able to convince adults. Sure enough, after the pooch goes to doggie heaven, the youngest daughter (Kyla Deaver) finds an imaginary “friend”. Mom, Dad, and the older sisters are much slower having to face inexplicable bruises, witness doors slamming shut on their own, hear strange knocking sounds, and smell the scent of rotting meat before calling in the mediums.

The Conjuring borrows quite a bit from other movies, not surprisingly starting with The Amityville Horror. That movie’s old house was said to have been built over a Native American burial ground as was the sinister Overlook Hotel of The Shinning. Wan even salutes his own early work in the Saw movies but the scariest homage of all, involving the tattered spirit of the former family maid, was directed to The Sixth Sense. Within this nod to the 1999 hit Wan surprises us a little. Horror movies aren’t particularly forgiving of skeptics and few make it out alive. When we first see the incredulous cop (John Brotherton) he comes with all the markings of a doomed character. When the mournful spirit crosses his path few can be blamed for thinking his hour has come, but Wan is content simply to spook him…and us.

Despite being a composite of classical horror tropes, The Conjuring brings some healthy innovations to the genre. Wan works wonders with his camera placing us at abstract levels with the characters. Odd angles often mark something amiss with a character and, when done right, such angles heighten our suspense. Few horror directors use them better than James Wan. His most terrifying use of camera magic comes when one of the daughters spots a demon hiding behind her bedroom door. Wan places his lens at just the right angle to obscure the hidden terror just enough from the viewer’s eyes. We don’t think we can see it and yet he holds us in terror because the camera angle tells us we should see it.

Wan’s other mastery here is his use of sound. In Insidious, which was one of the best horror films of the last decade, he without a musical score and silence proved more frightening than any musical cue. Here our first sighting of the witch is preceded by hushed fear, tricking us into letting our guard down and maximizing the impact when we see the face of evil.

The Conjuring, with its 1971 setting, is a tribute to the cheesy exploitation flicks following the trail of The Exorcist but manages to transcend barriers just the same. It’s a smart and well developed film that constructs something special with familiar blocks. Starting with Insidious and now The Conjuring, James Wan is fast becoming a modern master of classical horror. His greatest contributions to the arena are characters that have a little more humanity than mere scare props. In The Conjuring he even flashes the narrative backward to explain Lorraine Warren’s perturbed look when she first entered the Perron home. She saw evil the moment she entered the door.