Review of The Conjuring (2013) by Meatblossom — 30 Jul 2013

It's been a damn long time since I was creeped out at home after a movie, so I am very happy to say that after going to see The Conjuring I was jumping at shadows and looking over my shoulder for 3 or 4 days! Weird things would happen, like a fan that kept falling off the windowsill or my wife waking up in the middle of the night talking about "that terrible noise" when I had been laying there reading and it was quiet. I just about lost it when my wife and kid left to go to the store, and the fire alarms in the house started going off randomly in short bursts. I noticed that the alarms were always 3 beeps... like the knocks in the movie! It was probably just some sort of low battery warning. But I really wanted to not be in the house! I've calmed down since seeing the movie and everything seems rational again, but it really was an effective movie at raising one's paranoia and making you think "Yeah, I know that stuff never happens... but what if it did?".

Great pacing, good jump scares, good slow build scares. The only complaint might be that there seemed to be two different stories told the investigator couple, and the haunted family. Or from the perspective of evil entities, Annabelle the haunted doll and the nasty old lady who haunted the house. The movie tried to reconcile all of these things but it never felt like they tied together 100%.

The cats are running back and forth upstairs and writing about this movie is not helping me think about it in a rational manner.