The Conjuring - people think THIS is scary??

[Don_Draper]

From Wikipedia:

The Conjuring has been acclaimed from both critics and audiences alike.[57] Rotten Tomatoes sampled 142 reviewers and judged 87% of the reviews to be positive with an average score of 7.2 out of 10. Its consensus reads: “Extremely well-crafted and gleefully creepy, The Conjuring ratches up the dread with a series of smartly delivered, terribly effective old-school scares.”[58] Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 69 (out of 100) based on 33 reviews from mainstream critics.[57] CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film an A- grade.[59]

Well, I’d read that it got an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, read a few favorable reviews - including on the AVClub, whose reviews I generally tend to agree with; so last night with nothing better to do I go to the local cineplex and watch it.

What a load of shit! This was as formulaic, tepid and brainless a haunted house movie as anything. No subtletly, every ‘scare’ is telegraphed from 1000 miles away, and by the end I was close to walking out because I was so bored. I stayed to the end hoping against hope that there might be some kind of twist that would justify all the positive reviews, but no. It just sucked.

The movie is a round-up of every trite cliche of haunted house movies since the genre began - the family dog reacts to something that isn’t there, the littlest girl in the family suddenly has an invisible ‘imaginary’ friend, people look in a mirror and see ghosts standing behind them – everything but a cat jumping out at a person. (I suppose that scene just got cut for run time.) Then there’s a bunch of exorcism cliches tossed in for good measure - a possessed character levitates and smiles maliciously. At one point, I actually thought her head was going to spin right around like Linda Blair.

FTM, it was ridiculously apparent that the film’s creators think it is some equivalent to “the Exorcist” given the way the opening title clearly apes the font and graphic of the earlier film. Talk about vanity.

The film actually has a decent cast too - Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Lilli Taylor are all good, decent actors, but they are uniformly wasted in two-dimensional parts. I actually felt embarrassed for Lilli Taylor in the end, and kept wishing she’d get herself a better agent.

I couldn’t figure out who were the main protagonists for this movie. Was it the husband & wife demonologists, or the blue-collar mother & father? The film kept abruptly shifting focus between them.

Then there’s the plethora of interchangeable daughters. Not a single one of them stands out. The film claims to be based on a true story (ummm…ok.) And I suppose someone might just point out that the “real” family had umpteen daughters, so it’s “true to real life” that the film version family have umpteen daughters, but in terms of story it just seems like a mob of long-haired wannabe flower children standing in the background gaping and staring uselessly. (Doubtless the writers already…took some liberties with the story to begin with, couldn’t they have just condensed the number of girls to maybe two or three?)

Then on top of all that, there’s the demonologists assistants, and the daughter of the demonologist, and a priest for good measure. This movie had too many characters going in too many different directions. It was tiring keeping track of who was where doing what.

There are about half a dozen subplots that get introduced and discarded just as quickly. The movie opens with a very detailed backstory about an evil doll. The whole thing with the doll gets built up to the point where it seems as if it will be an important plot element. But no, nothing happens with the doll apart from one late scene where the doll is shoehorned in needlessly (as if the writers suddenly thought “Wait! We spent so much time on the doll earlier, we’ve got to do something with it.”) And Vera Farmiga’s character has PTSD from an experience at an exorcism, but nothing is done with that.

And to top it off, the film ends with a fairly stupid reference to “the Amityville Horror.” The demonologist wife says “there’s a case in Long Island they want us to investigate.” This movie is clearly time-stamped to be taking place in 1971. There’s no indication that the story lasts for more than a few weeks, but in '71 Ronald “Butch” DeFeo had not even murdered his family yet. (The inciting incident that supposedly set off the whole Amityville Horror spookiness in the first place.) OK, I know this last one is nitpicky, but any horror buff who would’ve gotten that reference would certainly know that!

to borrow a quote from Roger Ebert - “I hated, hated, hated, hated this movie!” It just fails on basically every level.So how in the world is this movie getting such good press?

[enipla]

I fell asleep. My Wife thought it was ‘meh’.

[aldiboronti]

I thought James Wan’s last outing, Insidious, was pretty good so I was looking forward to this one. When I saw the trailer though (not impressive at all) and read all the hype about ‘based on a true story’ I had a sinking feeling that this one would be a misfire.

I think I’ll give this a miss and pin my hopes on Insidious 2, which had a good trailer.

[BlackKnight]

While I don’t think the film was terrible, I am also baffled by the high scores that critics have given it. It’s a B- (or even C+) film that’s getting A ratings.

I’m less baffled by the scores that audiences have given it, since audiences have no taste.

One thing I’ll say in the movie’s favor: It did not make the mistake that many horror movies make, where “startling” is confused with “creepy”. (Both are “scary”, but startle-scary is cheap.) This movie was not startling - like the OP says, you could basically tell what was going to happen at any given point. But it was reasonably effective at building a low-level creepiness.

[Merneith]

And to top it off, the film ends with a fairly stupid reference to “the Amityville Horror.” The demonologist wife says “there’s a case in Long Island they want us to investigate.” This movie is clearly time-stamped to be taking place in 1971. There’s no indication that the story lasts for more than a few weeks, but in '71 Ronald “Butch” DeFeo had not even murdered his family yet. (The inciting incident that supposedly set off the whole Amityville Horror spookiness in the first place.) OK, I know this last one is nitpicky, but any horror buff who would’ve gotten that reference would certainly know that!

FWIW, the demonologist couple, Ed & Lorraine Warren, were real people who worked as paranormal investigators. Ed was an exorcist and Lorraine was a clairvoyant. I mean, that’s how they made their living. They wrote a bunch of books, too.

This movie was based on one of their early experiences. They were involved with the Amityville case, too, although as you point out, the timeline gets fudged in this movie.

[JohnT]

It was fun watching my 11yo daughter get scared. It’s a good one to watch with kids that age… scary, but not gory. No useless sex scenes. Just… ghosts and things that go double-clap in the night.

[drewtwo99]

I read your review, and thought instantly of Insidious, and how it was built up to be something great, I heard lots of great things about it, and then it turned out to just be a formulaic horror movie, predictable and not at all scary in any way.

I’ll be skipping this one too, thanks for sharing this with us.