The Conjuring Review

Great horror movies are few and far between now a days, the last one that I can that's worth the time of day was "The Host" back in 2006; which is a shame because I really do like horror movies. I blame this bad streak on the industry, horror movies are cheap to make and make a lot of money very quickly, so people don't even put in the effort. Fortunately director James Wan, the one guy who seems to care about horror movies anymore, attempts to revitalize the genre with The Conjuring. Taking place in the early 1970's, we learn the story of Ed and Lorraine Warren; a couple paranormal activity investigators who spend most of their time going around debunking hauntings. One day after they give a lecture at a college they are approached by a very desperate woman. She claims that the house her family just moved into is haunting them. She pleads with the Warren's to help her, they ultimately agree; and the second they step into the house, they sense something more evil than anything they've ever seen before. So they feel it's best to fully investigate the events plaguing the family and hopefully get the church to sign off on an exorcism. Now all they just got to survive until then. I've been itching for a really good horror movie for a while now; the last decent one I can think of was Evil Dead earlier this year. And going into the movie I heard almost nothing but good things; it has an 80 something on rotten tomatoes, several critics I followed vouched for it, I've even heard several people call it the scariest movie in years. So my hopes were high, and they were shot down. To be honest this movie is boring, nothing even happens for the first hour. It reminded me of old school horrors movies minus the ingenuity. The movie has a number of horror clichés, while it doesn't have as many as most movies these days it has more than I felt were necessary. The movie also fewer jump scares than a lot of movies, it relies more in tension. I can respect the movie for trying to be different, but it doesn't change the fact that it's boring at times. And at no point did I feel scared, there were one or two scenes that were creepy but nothing memorable. This movie was a letdown, I was hoping to be scared but all I did was fight the urge to fall asleep. Most people seem to love it so I seem to be an outlier. If you really like horror movies I'd say it's worth a shot, but in my opinion you're not missing much. 

2/5 Stars