Starring
Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor
Release
date July 19, 2013
Running
time 112 minutes
Budget
$20 million
Box
office $309,894,466!!!!!!!
I
was so sure that The
Conjuring
would be scary that I was nervous going into the dark theater. And I
did not come away unscathed. Months later, the film still troubles
me, but not because of how scary it was. The pathology of this film,
to quote Hannibal Lecter, is a thousand times more savage and more
terrifying (like the $box office compared to the $budget). I even
feel like I have been cursed by the experience of seeing it. Because
I keep asking myself, what were they thinking when they made this
film, and why can’t I think like that and make that much money?
Scary
movies about the paranormal are made scarier by the subtlety with
which unnerving and unsettling events are evoked and unfold. The
makers of The
Conjuring
did not adhere to this formula. In fact, the film is a masterpiece of
subtlety eschewed.
Soon
after the Perron family moves into their new house, it’s obvious
that something isn’t right. The creepy antique grandfather’s
clock ticks like the Telltale Heart in the wee desolate hours.
Suddenly it stops. That’s even worse. But wait, there’s more!
EVERY clock stops at the same time! Wrist watches, electric clocks,
the oven clock, the egg timer. That’s even scarier, right? Well,
maybe if it means that aliens have invaded, like in The
War of the Worlds,
and made every mechanical device crap out (except Tom Cruise’s
car). But in that case not knowing the time is the least of your
worries.
It’s
the middle of the night again. Mrs Perron (Lili Taylor) is standing
at the top of the stairs investigating a strange noise. The suspense
is unbearable. Uh oh. It seems that since moving in a week ago she
has managed to frame every photo ever taken of her five daughters and
crammed all of them on the wall going down the staircase, and
suddenly they all fly off the wall. The ensuing maelstrom of glass
shards rivals the scene in Deep
Blue Sea
when the shark smashes into the wall of the undersea laboratory, but
how scary is it given that The
Conjuring
is not an underwater film (conceptually or financially)? That much
broken glass is more of a janitorial nightmare than a paranormal one.
The
demonic presence in The
Conjuring
is a witch, whom Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) spots dangling from
the tree just like in the movie poster when she first visits the
house (in this case the film itself provides the spoiler). In this
day and age, many of us have warm fuzzy feelings toward witches, so
it’s not easy to make them scary. Like the Blair Witch Project, The
Conjuring
goes for a disturbing backstory. The
Conjuring
witch was the sister of a Salem witch! Eeeeeek! Right? Well, not
really. Because the thing about the Salem witches is that everyone
knows they weren’t witches at all. The scary part was how they were
tortured and hanged anyway (and unlike The
Conjuring
witch, theirs were not do-it-yourself hangings). To their credit, I
think the filmmakers wanted to have The
Conjuring
witch be the sister of an actual bad witch, but a house fell on that
one.
Many
scary movies that eventually drown their chills in overdone special
effects start small, and it’s the little scary things that can be
the most unnerving. The
Conjuring
starts out with a haunted doll, Annabelle. It’s terrifying when a
cute little doll turns out to be evil, but Annabelle in The
Conjuring
is inexplicably big and hideous. Who would buy a doll like that for a
child, and given that the story takes place in the 1970s, where would
they have found one? Nowadays scary demonic dolls are very popular.
If you’re lucky can get one on e-bay that is guaranteed to be
possessed, and you can buy an evil Chucky doll without even having to
outbid someone. But the original Chucky was a cute doll, and the real
Annabelle was a Raggedy Ann doll. I think Raggedy Ann is much scarier
than the doll created especially for The
Conjuring,
because Raggedy has not aged well, now seeming about as appealing as
Betty Davis in Whatever
Happened to Baby Jane?
To
their credit, the makers of The
Conjuring
tried to get a doll who is a thousand times more savage and more
terrifying to play Annabelle. But George had other plans for the
Estelle Costanza lookalike doll.
About the Author:
Linda Sherman is a freelance scientific editor and cartoonist who loves to watch bad scary movies while editing and good ones in her free time.
OMG I am so glad I am not the only one this film had that effect on! I just purchased it tonight after seeing it in the theater - it is one of the very few movies that REALLY scared me :) Awesome!
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the movie yet, but I probably will because Vera Farmiga from Bates Motel is in it. I'm not a fan of the recent horror movies (though I did like the Curse of Chucky and Evil Dead) as the movies are crammed with special effects and are lacking real scares.
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