The
Conjuring
(2013) is a slick and entertaining horror film buttressed by solid performances, good production values, and quite a few highly-effective jump
scares.
The
film’s recreation of the 1970s milieu is also effective, and pinpoints genuine terror
in a time of our national “crisis of confidence.”
For
some reason, there’s just something about the 1970s -- the era of The
Exorcist (1973), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Carrie
(1976), Halloween (1978), and The Amityville Horror (1979) -- that
remains scary to many of us.
Perhaps it
is because the 1970s was the last time we really let ambiguity seep deeply into the national
Zeitgeist, before it was “morning in
America” again -- and eternally --
even in times of war or other strife.
There’s
also some solid suspense wrought in The Conjuring’s first act, particularly
in a chilling prologue involving a doll possessed by a demonic entity. This
opening sequence plays like a mini-movie (or mini-Twilight Zone episode) in
its own right, and gets things started off in good, creepy fashion.
All
these values earn the film a positive recommendation from this writer, yet many
aspects of The Conjuring don’t work nearly as well as they ought to, and
manifest as a kind of carelessness in terms of storytelling.
In
short, The Conjuring is a good movie, but not a particularly deep one.
Elements of the film feel very familiar, and on top of that,
narratively inconsistent. The story
makes a mincemeat over its central debate (the difference between a ghost and a
demon), and even gets a key historical date wrong, all while banking on a
“based-on-a-true-story” approach to add to the effectiveness of the horror. Then, the film ends with a paean to superstition, suggesting an ardent belief "in the fairy tale" (of an afterlife) rather than in the auspices of science and reason.
Also,
and in some very crucial ways, The Conjuring feels more like a TV pilot -- an inducement to franchise-i-fication -- than a horror film with the potential and desire to transgress, shatter decorum, or
undercut convention.
To
put this all another way: The Conjuring is a great
roller-coaster ride and you’ll have a good time watching it. Have no mistake about that.
But
it simply isn’t the kind of horror movie that will trouble your slumber, or
linger in your memory. The film is
entertaining in a generic “summer blockbuster way,” yet never quite succeeds as
a work of transgressive art…which is the highest calling of the horror movie,
in my opinion.
The
Perron family moves into an old farmhouse in Rhode Island in the year 1971, and
almost immediately begins to encounter strange, supernatural
manifestations. After the death of the
dog, Sadie, events spiral out of control.
The girls report imaginary friends, the smell of rancid meat saturates
the house, and the family even discovers a dark, hidden cellar.
Bruised and
oppressed by an unseen “ghost,” matriarch Carolyn Perron (Lily Taylor) seeks
the assistance of paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine
Warren (Verma Farmiga). The couple visits
the house and confirms that a demonic entity has “latched on” to the
family. The Warrens plan for an
exorcism, but first must gather information so the Catholic Church can approve
the procedure.
Research
reveals that the Perron’s house was once home to a witch, Bathsheba, who
murdered her infant child in an attempt to gain favor with the devil. Bathsheba hanged herself soon thereafter, but
not before cursing any and all trespassers on her land.
Ed and
Lorraine worry that Bathsheba is now attempting to possess one of the Perrons,
the most psychologically vulnerable of the clan.
Before long,
their fears come to fruition…even as Bathsheba also attempts to latch onto
Lorraine, and her daughter…
When
The
Conjuring stays focused on the Perron family and their haunted farm
house, or explores the possibilities of a malevolent ambulatory doll in its prologue
(arguably the film’s most effective sequence), The Conjuring absolutely
qualifies as an adroit horror machine, a roller-coaster ride with all the
requisite bells and whistles. The film
is a big, successful crowd-pleaser.
And shit, what’s
wrong with that?
The
film is a machine that works.
But
test drive the machine some, and the film’s narrative doesn’t cohere. For example, consider the
film’s menace: a witch called Bathsheba who possesses mothers and makes them
kill their children.
The
Conjuring
spends a great deal of its early running time describing in detail the
important differences between ghosts and demonic entities. Ghosts haunt places; demonic entities latch
onto people, the Warrens explain.
Demonic entities never walked the Earth as humans, but ghosts did.
All
these “facts” are ably related by the film’s screenplay, but in terms of
Bathsheba, the whole idea is terribly muddled. Bathsheba is a witch who died
years ago, and who -- actually -- walked the Earth as a human. So quite clearly, then, and by the Warrens’
own definition, she’s a ghost, not a demonic entity, right?
Yet
the film continually refers to Bathsheba as a demonic entity who latches onto
people (not to a place, like a ghost), when in fact she simply can’t be, since she
was formerly a human being.
The
Conjuring thus
seems terminally confused about the very nature of its monster.
If Bathsheba’s a dead personality continuing
to exist after the end of her life on this mortal coil, she’s a ghost. By Ed’s own definition -- provided in the prologue
-- she can’t be a demon. So our question
to the film’s writers must be this: why go to such great lengths to present
these definitions of ghosts and demons, then simply to ignore them? Better not to bring up all these details in the first place if the script can't stick to them.
Secondly,
Bathsheba’s range of powers shifts radically depending on the needs of the
screenwriters. At one point, Lorraine
Warren turns her glance skyward, and ominous clouds blot out the sun, moving in
around the house.
The inference is that
Bathsheba is literally casting a shadow over the land. Similarly, Bathsheba can appear anywhere, at
any time, and literally throw people around the room (gripping them by their
hair). She can press the trigger on a
shotgun, and even shoot at people, too.
But
yet Bathsheba can’t endure in the physical body of a mother who…wait for it…loves her children.
The
conclusion of The Conjuring literally suggests that Perron’s love of her
children is the very thing that repels Bathsheba’s presence.
This
is a lovely sentiment about a mother’s love, to be certain, but not one that survives
close scrutiny. Given such facts, are we
then to assume that the ghostly Rory’s mother didn’t love him, since Bathsheba possessed her, and she killed her
own son?
Or
does Carolyn Perron just love her son more than Rory’s mother loved him?
Mother’s
“love” is kind of an occupational hazard of the job, isn’t it? Wouldn’t Bathsheba take that into account
when possessing Moms? It's like saying that a ghost who is allergic to garlic decides to possess only people who eat garlic.
The
problem here is, frankly, a deeper one.
The
Conjuring simply doesn’t leave any room for ambiguity. It settles on
its rules fairly quickly, and then attempts to show how those rules work in practice.
Demonic entities are not ghosts, but beings that can latch onto people, and
this demon, Bathsheba, exists to make mothers kill their children as she killed
her own. The antidote for possession by Bathsheba is, per the climactic scene,
a mother’s love.
It’s all neatly tied up
in bows for the audience, but that kind of clear-cut explanation of a
supernatural entity’s motivation is the enemy of successful horror, which seeks to
foster uncertainty, not bring clarity.
Even
in terms of getting historical details right, The Conjuring trips over
its feet. It is established that the events at the Perron family farm occur in
the year 1971, for example.
When
the possession crisis ends, the Warrens return home, and get a call from a
priest to investigate another haunting on Long Island: the Amityville Horror
Case.
But
history clearly records that the Lutzs didn’t even move into the house at
Amityville until 1975. If the Warrens
are investigating the DeFeo case at the same house, well, those murders didn’t
occur until 1974.
For
a film that tries so hard to squeeze mileage out of a “based on a true story”
approach, The Conjuring places fast and loose with the Warrens’
chronology (not to mention the actual fate of Bathsheba, in real life…).
I
would agree that I am nitpicking heere were it not for the fact that The
Conjuring works so assiduously to succeed on its claims of veracity. The movie even ends with authentic photographs
of the Warrens and the Perrons, furthering the apparent connection to historical “fact.” But the photographs are less persuasive than they
appear. All we see are personalities,
never anything supernatural. Given all
the “demonic activity” that the Warrens witness (and record on film...) in The
Conjuring, why not end this movie with their authentic footage, with excerpts from some of their "sessions" curing people of possession? Or, the film could play the audio of the possessed woman
that apparently spawned the making of the film
But instead, this true story only throws up a few photos which establish, simply, that the Warrens and the Perrons knew each other, in the 1970s.
The
very structure of The Conjuring actually diminishes real psychic fear or terror too. Ed and Lorraine are presented as
demonologists who do this kind of work on a regular basis. The film opens with one of their previous
cases (and again, quite effectively so…).
The movie ends with the promise that we will see their future
cases. In the middle, we see their
present “case.”
So,
essentially, then, we know that Ed and Lorraine, a priori, are going to survive whatever horrors they face in the
film.
That’s
why I made the comparison to a TV pilot in my introduction: The Conjuring feels more
like a set-up for a (perhaps very good…) TV series: one in which we follow a
pair of investigators on their quest to deal with supernatural entities. But most horror movies are built around their monster, not their protagonists, and the could be a problem, going forward, for the franchise. We know the Warrens are going to "make it," don't we?
The true concern here, however, is that in terms of the horror genre all of this franchise
setting-up only serves to diminish the terror of this entry. We’re being
prepared, from start to finish, in The Conjuring for a movie series…and
that very fact takes away the filmmakers’ ability to surprise audiences, or
take risks with structure, format and theme.
A
really good, really memorable horror movie must subvert expectations and play
with those things -- think Psycho, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
or even Wolf Creek.
Or think instead about the sub-textual messaging of The Amityville Horror (1979), a very
like-minded haunted house film from 1979 that treads in economic woes (as a
source no less than Stephen King commented on...).
The haunted house there, in other words, was a metaphor for something
else; something disturbing the society of the Carter recession.
By contrast, there is no meaningful
structural or thematic subtext in The Conjuring. It is simply – and I don’t mean to minimize the accomplishment – a strikingly effective
“scare” machine. The "bumps" and jump scares are orchestrated brilliantly and effectively.
But the
supernatural encounters in The Conjuring, while well-vetted in
terms of visual presentation (make-up, wire-work, and so forth), are also, alas from
the same stew of genre clichés we’ve seen many times in recent years.
The
exorcism angle we’ve seen in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The
Last Exorcism (2010), and The Devil Inside (2012) to name just
three films of the last decade.
The
ghost hunters we’ve met recently in films like Apartment 143 (2012), and
the malevolent entity endangering families might as well be the demon from The
Possession (2012), the evil inter-dimensional interloper from The
Apparition (2012), or the child-killer of Sinister (2012).
While
I enjoy the fact that The Conjuring locates the 1970s as
America’s decade of true terror (it was, in a very real sense, given the Oil
Embargo of 1973, Watergate, Three Mile Island, and the Vietnam War), the period
trappings are simply not enough to make The Conjuring feel original or
fresh.
Again,
I wish to be plain. I enjoyed The
Conjuring. It passed the time
pleasantly and scarily, and I jumped a few times, but there is not one quality
about this film that takes a chance or risk, or that challenges the audience’s
perceptions of reality.
Imagine
how we’d look at Psycho, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Blair Witch
Project, or other films deemed “classic” today, if they had adopted the
same commercial approach.
So
The
Conjuring will entertain you, but it will not, I suspect, endure as a horror classic. An equally effective scare machine will show
up next summer, and replace it in audience affections.
In fact, that movie might even be the inevitable sequel…