The Conjuring - film review

By the Seventies you’d have thought that American Gothic horror had embedded itself sufficiently in the cultural fabric to make nice young families think twice about buying rambling, rickety New England mansions on isolated acres of woodland. But that imperviousness to cliché is the lifeblood of the successful haunted-house movie and The Conjuring, by far the finest film yet from Malaysian-born shockmeister James Wan, is a very successful one indeed.

Inspired by a real-life 1971 exorcism involving renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren — the same couple who later uncovered the Amityville Horror — the film may flaunt its true-story credentials for the sake of lurid immediacy but, like the best of its variety, it has a healthy understanding of its own silliness.

The director previously visited this genre in 2011’s loony but effective Insidious, also about a wholesome household terrorised by restless demonic forces requiring expert (or crank, depending on your perspective) intervention.

In the new film’s prologue, which finds a nightmare-faced doll named Annabelle preying on two young nurses, it seems Wan is going for similarly jokey jolts, but it’s something of a red herring.

The tone instead turns disquietingly sinuous as Carolyn (a superb Lili Taylor) and Roger (Ron Livingston) Perron move into their new Rhode Island farmhouse (a production designer’s triumph) with their five daughters. The warning signs come early: when the family pooch won’t set foot indoors and turns up dead the next morning, you know nothing good lies ahead.

Before long, doors are slamming of their own accord, invisible antagonists are pawing at the girls as they sleep, and unexplained bruises are speckling Mum’s body. Enter the Warrens, played with thin-lipped commitment by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, whose Catholic Ghostbuster powers reveal the grotesque backstory behind the haunting.

The grisly Saw already proved that Wan can plant a neat scare, but working in more classical horror vein seems to have fired his imagination: he’s still flying the B-movie flag proudly, but there’s elegance and wit to his exploitation. As proceedings turn shriekier The Conjuring maintains an unexpectedly warm human grip on its characters: the Perrons and Warrens are credible, flawed families we can root for, even amid the amped-up genre showmanship that surrounds them. How much you choose to believe of their cleverly orchestrated ordeal is up to you. How terrified you are by it is entirely up to Wan.

Watch The Conjuring trailer: