I do love the way this universe ties all its movies together, though I'm sure I've said that before.
"The thing I loved most about The Conjuring was that it scared the shit out of you. That's always my favourite thing about a horror movie..."
Yes, one of my husband's greatest joys in life is trying to give me a heart attack while never being afraid of anything himself.
"I don't really get frightened but I can become engrossed and be taken off guard. I'm actually envious of your ability to be frightened. I think I'm too desensitized to horror. It probably has a lot to do with growing up in the middle of the video nasty craze.
"Visually, nothing gets me. Psychologically, I'm a total wuss. That's why zombies scare me."
I'm going to delve into that when we get to our next zombie movie but, for now, let's get back to The Conjuring...
Because of the focus on Annabelle, which leads to Ed and Lorraine giving a lecture, it takes awhile to get into the main story. Even though it's a slow start, the wait is one hundred percent worth it. This is a fantastic movie, with a strong story, atmospheric settings, and brilliant acting.
The Conjuring kind of has an Amityville vibe to it, which I don't think is any kind of a coincidence since Amityville was one of Ed and Lorraine's most famous cases. Amityville also plays a small part in the second Conjuring movie. Like I said, they're all connected.
Like Amityville, The Conjuring centres around what seems at first to be a haunted house - and OMG, I want that house! I think I could put up with at least a little demonic activity to have a house that big! 🤣
"Vera Farmiga (Lorraine Warren) and Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren) were convincing. I know the story is supposedly based on truth but I wonder how much truth is there... Anyway, if you want to sell a "true story", you have to play it convincingly and they did.
"I'd never actually heard of the Warrens before the movies. It's like that Enfield haunting - I'd never heard of that until a few years before the second Conjuring came out. I don't think I live in a bubble by any means but there are so many things in the world you just can't be exposed to them all."
Okay, so before I launch into the meat of the story, I have to say this: Don't write a dog into a story just to kill it! There are plenty of ways to show that something bad is happening without killing our canine friends. Not only is it massively triggering for dog lovers but it's just too easy. Put some damned thought into it.
Rant over.
The Perrons have five daughters. The girls are the first ones experience supernatural activity. No one who enjoys horror should be surprised by this because children are always more open to things that go bump in the night than adults are. Just go spend a few minutes on Reddit and you'll find hundreds of stories about the weird and unusual stuff kids have seen and said. They accept the stuff we, as adults, try to close ourselves off to.
"It's like the tooth fairy, isn't it? You become naturally more skeptical as you age. You get to that "Show me!" stage. Where's the proof? It's not just ghosts and ghoulies, though. You lose a lot of things as you grow up. As an adult, you could stand in front of a vampire and not believe it, but a child would believe it 100% - and why not? The myths had to be based on something. I believe wholeheartedly that there are things out there but I'm just as cynical as anyone else."
One of the Perron girls sleepwalks, which gives me the chance to talk about an item in the horror toolkit that isn't used as often as some others. Sleepwalking is a useful tool, especially in movies like this, because it mimics possession. It's a passing moment of losing one's self that the victim (sufferer?) can be brought back from. I guess you could describe sleepwalking as a form of safe mini-possession.
Interestingly, Carolyn Perron's (Lili Taylor) possession failed, I believe, for a similar reason. She never actually lost herself. Moms gone bad are always scary because, well, I'm sure your mom told you what mine did: "I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it." Horror sometimes rubs that fact in our face for good measure. The Conjuring isn't about being a bad mother, though. It's about the love of a mother. (Two mothers, really.)
As we know from Annabelle, a demon must be given permission; it can't just take your soul. Why couldn't it take Carolyn's soul? If you want to get sappy about it (which I'm sometimes guilty of), it's because her soul already belongs to her family.
And that's enough sappiness for awhile.
"Have you ever known a sleepwalker? I've known sleepwalkers but I've never been one myself. (Except, maybe this one time I fell out of bed as a child...) Isn't talking in my sleep bad enough?!
Honestly, I don't think I'd trust anyone who said they did something crazy while sleepwalking. I'm active in my sleep but to actually get up, wander around, and have no recollection? I'm dubious about just how much you can actually do while sleepwalking. Seems to me like sleepwalking can be an easy out for horror writers. Too easy, sometimes. It's dead useful for filling gaps and it creates interesting visuals but it's rarely essential.
"My grandfather used to sleepwalk, you know. He'd never leave the house or anything but there were some interesting... bathroom related incidents that I'll never forget. [Laughs.] It really drove my grandmother nuts! I don't remember it ever being scary, though.
"Possession? ...I think I do believe in possession. I think you have to. If 6,000 exorcisms happened last year and only 1% are real, that means there were 60 people who were genuinely possessed last year. That's terrifying. I don't believe in Bee Gee Jesus or giant angels but I believe there's... something - and if you believe in that, you have to believe in the other. "
For awhile, the Warrens's story runs parallel but separate to the Perrons' story. Ed and Lorraine are established as popular and competent ghost hunters/demonolgists/kooks while the spookiness in the Perron house builds. When the two stories intersect, though, that's when things get really interesting.
Soon, you've got eleven people crammed in that house. A big cast like that is a risky move but also an impressive one, if you can pull if off. Too many times in horror movies, large casts result in people getting forgotten about when they're not needed on screen. Not the case with The Conjuring. There are times like when Ed and Lorraine go rushing back to the house and find Roger and the others already in the middle of trying to subdue Carolyn. For a large cast to be successful, you have to know what the rest of your characters are doing when they're not the main focus.
Although a cast as large as this one can be tricky to wrangle, it's tremendously effective when it works. The bigger a cast is, the more people you force into a small space (okay, it's a huge house, but it's still just a house), the crazier it gets. When you've already got a whole bunch of crazy stuff going on, that craziness gives the action a frantic pace. Also, the more people you have to watch, the more likely you are to lose someone along the way.
"Sometimes films rely on a small ensemble and they suffer for it. For example, the 1978 Dawn of the Dead was 4 characters, the 2004 remake was 14. Which was better? (The remake, obviously.) As long as there's a reason for a character's being there and they fulfil their purpose, it's not too large. No one in The Conjuring was wasted. Everyone was there for a reason so the cast, while large, was exactly right for the movie."
Like the rest of The Conjuring movies, this is quite a long movie but it doesn't feel long. It's so engaging the time just flies by.
"The problem is too many films cut key scenes in the name of keeping it down to that hour-and-a-half time frame movie execs assume our attention spans are. I'd keep my butt in a seat for hours if it means fully developing a story line. That's when you know you've got a good director; the story and characters are well-developed because they've given them the time they need to grow outside of the script."
Some of the things I like best about the films in The Conjuring universe are the endings. Yes, they do generally have happy(ish) endings, which is nice, but with The Conjuring and its sequel, you also have Ed and Lorraine taking their possessed item (in this case, the music box) back to their collection. The camera zooms in and you're waiting for that final jump...
But it never comes.
It's almost taunting and I love it. To be fair, though, there's very little about these films I don't love. They're so well done it's impossible to find fault with them. What are your thoughts on The Conjuring films? Get in touch. Let me know. And, don't forget to come back tomorrow to see what the tenth spooky Halloween treat will be.
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