“It doesn’t matter where you go, this dark entity has latched itself to your family and it’s feeding off you.”
The road to respectability has been a longer one for Horror than any other genre. After decades of producing largely trash with the occasional classy outing, horror found critical acclaim more often when it was used as a metaphor. You can go back to Geroge A. Romero’s Dead Trilogy which wasn’t about zombies but racial tensions, consumer culture and Cold War militarism. Among this decade’s most acclaimed horror films were metaphors for teenage promiscuity (It Follows) or parental anxiety (The Babadook). My criteria is simpler. How effectively can you set me on edge using only the tools of cinema?
After years of trying, James Wan finally crafted a horror film that sits among the genre’s best, placing him deservedly in the company of Wes Craven and John Carpenter. The story is rich, incorporating at least three paranormal events and often layering a couple of hauntings on top of each other. Rewatching it, I focus on the interesting framings that look like they’re hiding something when they’re not or that look completely normal until they pan up to reveal a screaming hag on the furniture. A little bit of moving Art Direction and a powerful Sound Mix go a long way.
“You have a lot of spirits in here, but there is one I’m most worried about because it is so hateful.”
The Conjuring is the Horror film of the 2010s, a haunted house movie that layers in a few other supernatural subplots by focusing not on the mystery of the house or the family inside but paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are juggling a few cases while recovering from a particularly nasty recent one. The film is blessed with a lot of really good work from children and three powerhouse lead performances. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play the paranormal investigators with a gravitas that helps anchor the effects so the whole project doesn’t fly off into silly-ville. Lili Taylor throws everything she has into the part. There’s a scene where the evil spirit would rather kill her than let her leave. It’s physical acting, no dialogue, and Taylor commits like it’s Sean Penn at Oscar season.
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