2013

First off, this movie should have been called The JumpScare. I like a good ghost story, I do, but when you start with dolls and end up with witch demons, I have trouble trusting you, filmmaker. That being said, this was actually a good movie, and I can see why it made so much money. Well that, and also people will line up out the door to see Patrick Wilson in a turtleneck.

The story actually starts with a set up for a spin-off. This director knows how to keep the studio in his pocket. It also introduces the protagonists of the story: Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). They are paranormal investigators who are trying to figure out why two dumb nurses would invite a ghost into their house. I mean, I’m sure rent was expensive in 1968, but telling a demon it can inhabit a doll is not the way to Air BnB. Although, I would pay to see someone make money off that concept.

Ed is a demonologist and Lorraine is clairvoyant. They tag team their “cleansings” and make a nice amount of money along the way. Most of the hauntings so far are your classic, run of the mill ghost sightings. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a good Latin bible quote and some sage burning.

Enter the conjuring family: a large family moves to Rhode Island (incidentally one of the states that does not have the disclosure of “weird shit happens here” clause) and into a run-down house by a body of water. The Perron family immediately starts noticing weird noises and their children sleepwalking. Their dog also does not want to enter the house. When I go house hunting, I’m definitely bringing a dog with me. I don’t need to find out my house is haunted AND the pets don’t want to come inside.

When the ghost goes from bump-in-the-night to bump-on-the-head, the Perrons contact the Warrens and the World’s Worst Sleepover begins! Ed and Lorraine move into the house for a couple nights and set up their extreme cache of cameras, video recorders, and sound recorders. Immediately they both capture things and start to get the shit knocked out of them all. Lorraine finds out a witch sacrificed her baby to Satan (not sure who else you can sacrifice your baby to in the 19th century), and then decided that wasn’t enough. So she hung herself from the creepiest tree in the front yard. Because when you’re a witch, you need to make a dramatic exit, otherwise people won’t know your intentions.

The house then becomes a haven for malevolent spirits and demons over the next century, making sure that everyone who entered the house was immediately cloaked in a dark mass of depression and death. Infanticide is the new black, we get it.

Ed and Lorraine decide the house needs an exorcism post-haste and beg a local priest to help them. The priest is a little shaky since the kids aren’t baptized and the family doesn’t belong to a church. Good to know the Catholic Church was always being assholes to children. Ed decides that maybe his Latin is strong enough that he could do it himself. And it’s a good thing he does, because the Perron mom is about to get inhabited by the demon witch and go full on psychopath. The demon is somehow banished back to hell and the family now has an un-sellable house and a huge therapy bill coming their way.

This is probably the first “scary” movie I’ve seen this month and I have some thoughts:

• Wind chimes are terrible sounding in any decade and I will be damned if i ever allow them in my home.
• The best horror movies are set in the 70s and prior because that’s when they wear those weird looking nightgowns.
• Vera Farmiga somehow looks both young and old at the same time.
• It’s amazing that more toys from the 19th century aren’t possessed. All of them were creep AF.