Last summer a major studio gave us a moderately budgeted haunted house movie, The Conjuring, that scared up some good buzz and doubled its budget in profit. It seemed inevitable that there would be a sequel featuring lead characters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but legal wranglings over who owns the rights to the Warrens’ case files may have scuttled a direct sequel (although IMDB lists a Conjuring follow-up with stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga for 2015).

To keep the franchise alive, New Line has produced a sort-of-prequel featuring a minor character from the first movie: the cursed doll known as Annabelle. The doll was only an indirect precursor to what was to come in The Conjuring, and here we see another version of that expository scene (minus any appearance by Ed and Lorraine) which sets up a flashback that is the doll’s origin story.

Annabelle starts out innocently enough with just another sought after doll that’s part of a collection of three. John and Mia Gordon are expecting, and John (Ward Horton) gets the apparently rare Victorian doll for Mia (Annabelle Wallis) as a gift. After the Gordons’ neighbors are murdered by cult members (one of whom is their estranged daughter Annabelle), the killers invade the Gordon home and nearly kill Mia and her unborn child (shades of the Manson Family murders which happened during the same 70s era of the film). The police arrive in time to kill the murderers, and a single drop of Annabelle’s blood seeps into the doll, setting off months of horror for the Gordons.

It seems the cult members were actually interested in conjuring some demonic forces and whatever it is that they have unleashed wants a new soul, but the soul cannot be taken. It must be offered, and the question is will Mia fall for the demon’s tricks and offer up her baby or herself?

Annabelle isn’t quite as good or as scary as The Conjuring, but it gets the job done as expected for a horror film released this time of year. The film’s strength comes in one particularly blood-curdling scene in the basement storage area where some thing is lurking and then reappears in the shadows a few more times to truly jolt Mia and the audience. I also appreciate that these films from producer James Wan eschew flashy CGI for physical effects and people in some truly frightening makeup. Extra points for never showing the doll moving on its own.

The film’s success also rests almost squarely on the shoulders of Annabelle Wallis who is in almost every scene. Besides being ethereally beautiful, Wallis perfectly delivers all of Mia’s emotions as she goes through her pregnancy, the terror of the attack, trying to get back on track after the birth and a move to a new home, and then dealing with almost unseen forces that may be trying to take her baby.

Ward Horton is almost as pretty as Wallis, but he ends up being more of a supporting character as he disappears for large portions of the film and then becomes kind of a red herring when he behaves in a way that makes you wonder if he’s somehow part of the plot to take the baby’s soul. Alfre Woodard, as a wise bookstore owner who seems to know more than she lets on, also feels like she’s part of something. The film becomes a little derivative of Rosemary’s Baby towards the end but, thankfully, doesn’t quite go there.

My only real complaint is the director’s over-reliance on REALLY LOUD MUSICAL CUES to scare the audience when the visuals should be enough to do the job. I was hoping that what Wan had accomplished in the relatively quiet The Conjuring (and even into Insidious Chapter 2) would have carried over into Annabelle, even though it’s directed by someone else (John R. Leonetti, the cinematographer of The Conjuring). Curtains blowing just don’t need to be accompanied by a shockingly loud sound effect.

Overall, Annabelle may not be as creepy as it could have been, but it’s an effective thriller with a few genuinely scary moments and some strong performances that should do some big business during the Halloween season.

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Halloween is fast approaching and I can’t think of a better way to spend the holiday than watching some good old-fashioned haunted house movies. Slasher flicks are more modern fare for Halloween, but the season is really about ghosts and spirits and that sort of thing. The only problem is … it’s hard to find a good old-fashioned haunted house movie these days that doesn’t have to rely on cheap scare tactics — over loud music or sound effects cues, a cat jumping through a window — to give the viewer chills up and down their spine.

Most of the great haunted house movies came about between the 40s and 70s with films like The Uninvited, The Innocents, and The Haunting being among the best. The fear of possession and the Devil manifesting himself on earth took hold in films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen, but the early 80s saw a return to ghost stories with the excellent The Changeling, the all-star Ghost Story and, of course, Poltergeist. Where most of these haunting movies relied on atmosphere and restraint, using the “less is more” approach to spooking an audience, Poltergeist set the stage for special effects extravaganzas taking over for imagination. The most egregious offender was the horrendous remake of The Haunting which starred Lili Taylor.

Haunted house movies have come back into vogue thanks to the “found footage” craze that began with The Blair Witch Project and has continued through a series of Paranormal Activity movies, but finding a good, scripted haunted house movie — and no, The Haunted Mansion does not count — has been difficult when blood and gore are the order of the day. Director James Wan stumbled upon some success with Insidious, a haunted house movie that used physical effects and actors in makeup to provide some chills, but still relied a bit too heavily on the overly loud music to produce a jump. Many of his visuals were chilling enough without that artificial prodding and that knocked the movie down a peg in my book. So it was with some apprehension that I went into The Conjuring, worried that Wan would stick to his old tricks.

Thankfully, that was not the case. Wan was able to convey terror within the Perron home without resorting to fake scares and overblown CGI. Most of the chilling moments come from clever edits augmented with sound effects and a subtly disturbing score (the use of horns to evoke that mood is genius). I reviewed the film upon its initial release, but watching it a second time I had an even greater appreciation for what Wan accomplished by keeping things low-key. Ghosts appear and disappear within a single shot or in cleverly edited sequences. Doors opening on their own accord, balls bouncing by themselves, clocks stopping at the same time every night, hands appearing out of the darkness … these are things that can make your hair stand on end all by themselves. That’s not to say Wan completely stays away from loud sound effects — there is an obvious homage to The Haunting at one point that includes a loud pounding sound — but he uses his set and physical effects team to great advantage.

Adding to the realism of the story is Wan’s excellent cast. Patrick Wilson, fresh off of Insidious (and back for Insidious: Chapter 2), plays the stalwart Ed Warren who believes it is his mission in life to help those who are experiencing paranormal events by either proving or debunking the claims. Vera Farmiga is his wife, Lorraine, a medium who can see and feel the spirits tormenting her clients. The Warrens are a real couple and The Conjuring is based on a real case, so knowing this adds to the authenticity of the film. Ron Livingston plays Roger Perron, the home owner, and Lili Taylor returns to haunted house territory as Carolyn Perron, the wife and mother tormented most by the evil inhabiting their new home. The couple also have five daughters who become targets of the spirit tormenting their mother. While Taylor wasn’t responsible for the mess that was Jan de Bont’s The Haunting, she makes up for that choice very nicely here.

Warner Home Video’s new Blu-ray release of The Conjuring serves up the film with all of its spookiness intact. The image looks beautiful, never breaking down in many of the dark scenes (and a lot of the film takes place at night or in very dark areas of the house). The sound is also excellent. The surround speakers are used very subtly throughout the film, but when they need to kick in, they will kick in. The Blu-ray also includes a DVD that looks almost as good, especially by keeping the blacks a very solid black. The picture may not be as sharp as the Blu-ray, but if you’re watching on a standard definition monitor, it will look just fine. The audio is also comparable.

As much as I was looking forward to the Blu-ray release, I have to say that I am very let down by the extras included on the disk. There are a total of three featurettes and no audio commentary. The bonus material consists of:

• Featurette: The Conjuring: Face-To-Face with Terror (6:39) – A (too) short visit with the actual Perron family who discuss their encounters that inspired the film.
• Featurette: A Life in Demonology (15:39) – A short biography of Ed and Lorraine Warren, featuring Lorraine and several of their devotees.
• Behind the Scenes: Scaring the ‘@$*%’ Out of You (8:04) – James Wan and the production team and cast members discuss what goes into making a good haunted house movie.

Gathering the entire Perron family together just begs for a more in-depth look at the real story behind the movie. Carolyn Perron is still obviously affected by the events that transpired, so much so that she refuses to even see the movie, but it would have been great to have seen a full-length documentary about their experience, perhaps with the participation of Lorraine Warren. Including some of the data from the investigation — photos, film, recordings — would certainly help sell skeptics on the story. The profile of the Warrens could have also been beefed up a bit. They have a treasure trove of artifacts and records from their career — Lorraine is still working! — that some of those things could have been included in the shorts to beef them up. All we really get are a series of talking heads praising the Warrens. I really wanted more. The behind the scenes short also just whets your appetite for more on how the film was made, so real movie buffs will be disappointed but at least James Wan does manage to cram a lot of information into the short piece.

Overall, I can’t not recommend the home video release of The Conjuring, because as a movie it’s pretty terrific at delivering the scares. The Blu-ray looks and sounds great, so there’s no arguing with the quality of the feature presentation. For those who like to delve more into their movie viewing experience, the Blu-ray’s lack of extra features will leave you wanting more. It almost makes you wonder if there is a deluxe version coming at some point. For now, though, The Conjuring stands right up there with The Haunting as a fine example of the haunted house movie.

Warner Home Video generously provided CliqueClack with a Blu-ray/DVD combo package for reviewing purposes.

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I love a good haunted house movie, but so many of them have just been done so badly over the years with the advance of special effects technology allowing filmmakers to put just about anything on the screen that they can imagine, usually to the detriment of the story and the scares. In the first half-century of motion picture history, directors had to rely on imagination to scare audiences, spooking them with what was unseen rather than putting it all front and center (something a young director named Steven Spielberg also used to great effect in a little film called Jaws). Many consider 1944’s The Uninvited to be one of the greatest haunted house movies ever made, but I don’t think it holds a candle to 1963’s The Haunting, a film that relied on the heard but unseen to send shivers down the spine.

The Haunting was subjected to a woeful remake in 1999 with Lili Taylor as the young woman besieged by spirits during a haunting investigation (in the original, you never knew if there were real ghosts or if the character was simply losing her mind … or if other forces were at work), and at that time I was disappointed with Taylor’s choice in selling out her indie cred for such a bombastic piece of Hollywood trash. But now, Taylor turns up in a new haunted house movie, The Conjuring, and I can happily say all is forgiven.

The Conjuring is about a particular haunting incident in Rhode Island, but it’s more the story of two paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). The Warrens have a reputation for sussing out the reasons for supposed hauntings, usually debunking them, but they had become very well-known in the 1970s for their investigations, most notably one involving a house and family in the small town of Amityville, NY. The Conjuring takes place before the events in Amityville (although there is a sly reference to that upcoming case at the end of the film) with two cases, one of which involves a doll that is being used as a vessel for a demonic possession that plays into the main story of the Perron family in Rhode Island. The Perrons have just moved into a house they purchased from a bank without any background information on the previous owners (they don’t even know the house has a basement). Once the family becomes terrorized night after night, mom Carolyn (Taylor) seeks out the Warrens to help. What they find is shocking, to say the least.

Revealing too much of the film’s plot would only serve to diffuse the scares (as has already been done with one of the best scares revealed in the trailer), so I won’t go into too much detail. What I can say about the movie is that director James Wan knows how to set up a scare and delivers without over-doing it too much with unnecessarily loud sound effects, false jumps or ominous music that telegraphs what is about to happen. Best of all, Wan refrains from showing us a bunch of CGI spooks, sticking mostly to physical effects – a sleeping child’s leg being jerked is simple, but effectively creepy – and actors portraying the spirits in deathly makeup unnervingly appearing and disappearing. Wan even manages to throw in a little nod to the original The Haunting with the familiar pounding sound effect while the camera focuses on a wall.

Taylor redeems herself from her initial “haunting” as the mom who would go to any length to protect her family and she gets put through the wringer. Ron Livingston plays the husband, but he gets relegated a bit to the background and is the one always asking “what’s going on?” Wilson and Farmiga are terrific as the Warrens, depicting the couple as two people who were put together for a reason, and when that reason endangers Lorraine’s life, Ed will do anything to protect her. The real Warrens have a long list of stories (Ed is deceased, but Lorraine is still with us) to tell, so if The Conjuring is a success we can look forward to seeing more of Wilson and Farmiga doing their thing.

In an age where haunted house movies have become excuses for overblown special effects extravaganzas or cheaply produced “found footage” films, The Conjuring serves up the scares the good old fashioned way, letting us see just enough of the horrors Lorraine is able to see while allowing us to use those visions to create even more horror in our own minds. Three cheers to Wan and company for doing the haunted house movie right, and here’s to more adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

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