Yes, the intersection of two favorite themes of American mystical thrillers is a young family moved into a cursed house and possessed by a demon. But the creators of “The Conjuring” showed originality – the film is based on real events, and its characters existed in reality, and two of them (a female psychic and the former “obsessed”) were consultants on the set. Does this make the film more interesting?
Maybe not much. Reality has one property – it is not as beautiful and exciting as fiction. And what stirs the imagination as a paranormal phenomenon pretending to be credible is not impressive as a script for the film. In addition, the story itself, as I wrote above, as an urban legend is very banal: obsession is still a medieval “trick”, and haunted houses are found in ancient literature.
So the film turned out to be somewhat boring - night rustles, sinister shadows, ghosts, and, as a climax, demonic possession.
Atmosphericity is present, it cannot be taken away. But here's the original. However, some draw the film pretty characters - the actors managed to create for whom you worry. I especially want to mention the ghost hunter. Ed Warren, who turns out to have a weakness for old cars, and a cop whose role is more comical - to show that not afraid of the gangster way, a tough cop is not at all ready for a meeting with supernatural horror. At first I confused the daughters of Perron, but each in history has its own role, and these roles were not reduced to the level of extras. In general, people were shown to us, and otherwise it could not be – historical, one might say, personalities that entered the history of parapsychology.
But the evil is about such a plan, stories about which can be read in any cheap publication about the paranormal. Well, apparently, the story tried to embellish at a minimum. Perhaps, in order not to awaken the dead evil.
However, the excess of originality is sometimes detrimental (remember recently I watched “Sinister”, where the Sumerian demon was like a black metal player), and it is better to turn to the archetypes. For a horror film, this is especially true because fear is based on ancient instincts, and people are mostly afraid of the same things: the dark, the spiders, the dead.
Even in the film a little loaded religious orientation, however, not too intrusive and quite politically correct.
Summary: a rather boring mystical thriller, but fans of the genre may well like it. A classic story about the cursed house and the expulsion of demons.
7 out of 10
Original