Movie Review: The Conjuring

From the get-go, The Conjuring was eerie. It delivered the creeps with its excellent use of photography, visual design, sound and music and a welcome absence of gore. This, to me, was a step in the right direction for the genre and, arguably, a better piece than the overrated mess that was Insidious. That being said, the plot and the set pieces were horribly familiar and frustratingly unoriginal - opening doors, basements, whispers, rocking chairs, dolls, imaginary friends, mirrors - that I felt like I'd seen it all before. The film also had the tendency to confuse the scary with the startling, and resorted to increasing physicality and jump scares rather than an effective slow-burn. The Conjuring was generally fine, but I didn't think it passed my key horror movie test: when you leave the theater, the outside world does not look quite as reassuring as it normally does. Oh, and one more thing, if your dog won't enter your new house, it's time to move out. Ha. 6.5