my daughter did not dare to go so it was just the 2 of us!!
Movie date!
My date!!! Hehe..
James Wan the director of The Conjuring
Wan was born in Sarawak but moved to Australia when he was young. After completing a degree in arts from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), he ventured into movie-making. Wan got his first big break when he co-wrote and directed the horror slasher film Saw in 2004.
The movie was so popular that it spawned six sequels and started a trend called “torture porn” – movies with graphic violence (Hostel and Turistas are examples).
“I hated that I was called the Godfather of torture porn,” he laments. Wan has since moved on. In The Conjuring, as well as Insidious, the spookiness that Wan employs is more psychological than visual.
After more than a decade honing his craft in the horror genre, James Wan is ready to try something new. Wan has been picked to direct the next The Fast And The Furious instalment, and he is excited about this new project.
I am so lazy to do a review but I found a good one in today's NST:
IT is refreshing to come across a horror movie with a paranormal slant that is not built on someone’s penchant for blood and gore.
Hollywood film-makers do enjoy adding shock factors to such genre, and sometimes these unnecessary jolts come across as cheap and trite. Real suspense and scares comes from good stories that may not even see a drop of blood being spilled.
For a story based on true accounts, the suspense level is expectedly much higher. The Conjuring is based on one of the case files of famous paranormal investigative team of Ed and Lorraine Warren. The case was so horrifying that they had locked it away, until now, if you want to believe it.
The film centres on the many hauntings experienced by the Perron family — Roger, his wife Carolyn and their five daughters April, Christine, Andrea, Nancy and Cindy — at their house in the 1970s.
In the film, Roger (Ron Livingston), Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and their kids move into a remote farmhouse on Rhode Island. It is haunted by several entities but there is one that is extra malevolent and wants the family dead.
The Conjuring opens first with an introduction to Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) as they explain one case they had dealt with which involved the famous “Annabell doll”.
Then it moves back to the Perrons who realise, after numerous horrifying events, that there is an unexplained dark presence in their new home. Carolyn then calls the Warrens, hoping to find an explanation to what is happening to her and her family.
Although The Conjuring incorporates the common themes of haunted houses and possession, you will still be curious to find out how the story will unravel.
No hauntings are similar and director James Wan proved this with his previous films, Saw and Insidious, where he prefers to explore different ways to bring in the horror without making them appear unrealistic.
The Conjuring offers plenty of scares in the most unusual places. It’s a spooky ride into a creepy dimension rarely visited by other mainstream film-makers and you’d be forgiven for wishing that the movie will end soon.
The spooks and suspense sequences are so good and are executed in such heart-stopping manner that horror fans will find much relish in them. Quite easily, The Conjuring delivers plenty of scares to make it one of the best in the genre ever made. It starts off rather slow, but as the momentum builds, it does not stop bringing in the scares and that’s when you wish it does.
The eldest Perron daughter, Andrea, who still talks about the horrors of the haunting and has written a book about it, said in an interview that the film has truly captured the essence of what happened to her family.
One interesting scene features the Perron kids playing a game called Hide And Clap, where they hide and clap to give the seeker a clue to their whereabouts. It’s almost similar to Hide And Seek, but in a house full of ghosts, you don’t want to know who or what is “clapping”. Oh, the suspense!
The youngest Perron, April, says her new friend, Rory, can only be seen in the mirror of a music box that she has found in the house. When Carolyn and Lorraine express a wish to see Rory, what happens next is so cleverly built that viewers will find themselves cowering in their seats. In my case, I kept my eyes shut.
Viewers will step into the horror and its spooky universe from the perspectives of both the Perrons and the Warrens as they learn about the history of the mysterious house. The secrets are revealed bit by bit.
There is an element of drama around Carolyn, who loves her family and Lorraine, whose gift of clairvoyance is taking a toll on her life little by little, as observed by her husband.
Farmiga embodies the character of Lorraine and excellently executes the scenes where she “sees” things. She shows that the ability to see the unseen can be a curse.
Lili Taylor isn’t new to the horror scene, having done The Haunting (1999) alongside Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson. Although a woman with a gentle demeanour, Taylor portrays the part of a frightened parent and a disturbed soul perfectly. All the cast members play their parts effectively, creating a beautiful on-screen chemistry that strengthens the plot.
The haunting scenes look real and they don’t look like CGI. Just like TV programmes such as Ghost Hunters, the Warrens also apply a scientific approach to their cases, using relevant gadgets and cool audio visual equipment (for the era they were from) for their investigations.
Like Insidious, the music score is the star as well, bringing the suspense to a different level.
We don’t know how much of the film is truth, but we do know that it is part of what really happened to the Perron family. One thing for sure, viewers will get a thrill out of The Conjuring.
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