The Conjuring - As is Expected

"They feel the same way about Bear Grylls as you do about the Conjuring people."

-My friend, and I understood instantly exactly what they meant.

The Conjuring (2013) gained traction on release and its cinematic universe could be said to parallel the MCU at this point. They're certainly falling into the same 'tease the next film too much in the current one' trend that Marvel are doing. But the first Conjuring movie is where it all started.

It's a by the numbers story - family moves into a haunted house, spooky things happen, they call in paranormal investigators.

This isn't always a bad thing. It's a tried and tested formula and there's a comfort in watching it play out time and time again. (Horror fans do love the same thing, over and over again.) In this case, the fact it was 'based on a true story,' added to the scare factor.

Which is good, because most of the scares in this film are just jump scares. Some of them work, some are fake-outs, so it gets tiring fast. (And when looking over the Annabelle films and The Nun, most of the Conjuring Cinematic universe does this.) Although, to its credit, a lot are creative, at least, even if the demons threats are not.

Our characters aren't driving the plot either. There's too many daughters to get a grip of any individual personality tropes and the parents are mostly there to act wide-eyed and surprised when the Warrens come in. Its hard to feel attached to our care about these characters when we they haven't been fleshed out and we've had no time with them.

Which leaves us with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga), the link between all of these movies. (Most of the time.) They're not bad characters. They play off each other well and provide exposition and information neatly. When they get investigating, things get interesting, and Lorraine's psychic skills at least add another layer to the proceedings.

But there is an air of awkwardness around using the Warrens in this way. I touched on this in my Annabelle mega-review, but it feels strange to be making movies like this about figures who were still alive at the time. There's a difference between making a biopic on a celebrity, and for fictionalising a topic as slippery as the supernatural. Since talking about Annabelle, and watching the Conjuring movie, I was interested to get hold of the Warrens' accounts, only to find there's next to no evidence to back up their claims. When we see them employing cameras and tape recorders throughout the 'conjuring house,' it begs the question of 'why didn't they do this in real life?' Why are we being asked to take their word on it, and then see them portrayed as heroes?

This wouldn't be such a sticking point for me if the movie didn't push itself as being so true. (When, looking into the case, not a lot seemed to happen. The family even lived there for ten years.) It's a marketing tactic, of course, which again isn't the worst thing, but just makes it more uncomfortable combined with everything else.

Ignoring all this, the movie's not that egregious. It's shot well, even if its leeched of colour, and I like the house's backstory. It would be nice to have more backstory and flashbacks, with less kids cluttering up the screen. The scares are well-thought out and clever. (Even if the Annabelle cameo felt like a sidetrack to what was happening.) It's easy to see why, given the film's almost ten years old, it became so iconic as to spawn a franchise. What seems like we've seen it before in films now, probably grew at least some of their roots here.

Good for a classic 'you get what you expect,' horror film, if you ignore the 'real story.'