'The Conjuring' Frightens Away Guts and Gore For Retro Ghost Hunting

Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) confronts the evil entity tormenting a Rhode Island family.

For a while there, director James Wan failed to generate the same level of genre-changing thrills that his breakout slasher Saw had in 2004. Dead Silence and Death Sentence weren't exactly resume highlights, however Wan returned to the horror scene in early 2011 with his terrifying supernatural thriller Insidious, which gave  audiences a second wind of Wan's contemporary mastery of the genre, and in return scared the living daylights out of them as hefty thank you. Wan now continues to spread his wings into the supernatural once more with The Conjuring.

From the start, The Conjuring claims to be based on the undisclosed investigation of paranormal team Ed and Lorraine Warren, most notable for their involvement in the Amityville Horror case. The Conjuring, however, is set a few years before Amityville as the Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) investigate the disturbing events at house of the Perrons, a Rhode Island couple living with their five girls.

The Conjuring will scare the pants off the typical moviegoer, though the film follows the same pattern as any other paranormal investigation. Experts Ed and Lorraine break the disruptions into three distinct components, cleanly severing the three acts of The Conjuring. The build-up at first takes its leisurely time moving the plot along as the narrative bounces back between the Warrens and the Perrons until the two finally cross paths and the occurrences take center stage.

While there are plenty of similarities to many other paranormal films in the genre, James Wan has a keen eye for authenticity. Wan pays close attention to the era, constructing a retro thriller, even going as far as when the Warrens are capturing ghostly footage down in the basement, it's camera tech from 1971, not 2013.

And using as little CGI necessary and relying on practical effects, the atmosphere has a more natural feel providing a much more effective build towards the scares. And there are plenty of scares throughout The Conjuring, but they're there to serve a purpose rather than create shallow shock value. Fortunately, there's less emphasis on The Conjuring grossing its audience rather than genuinely offer up a shocking course of event. 

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga lead a well-rounded cast that includes Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor as the tormented Perron family. Even their quintet of daughters are each given their moments of vulnerability with the evil spirits with the walls of their home. Wilson and Farmiga are no strangers to the genre. Wilson previous starred in Wan's Insidious, while Farmiga has thrilled as Norma Bates in A&E's Bates Motel. The two show great capability at portraying the paranormal duo and additionally work well in one another in many of the film's tense moments.

The Conjuring's an old-school haunt in the manner James Wan approaches the project, but it just doesn't work wonders in reinventing an overdone and highly predictable supernatural genre. However, Wan maintains enough suspense to entrance audiences from one sequence to the next, continuously questioning what other secrets buried deep within the haunted labyrinth have yet to be unveiled over the course of the story.

While it may seem like another investigation for the Warrens, Wilson and Farmiga are provided as much weight as the family and at times it's very easy to lose track of who's the most important character to invest in. Occasionally, too many characters are doing too much at one given time and some of the tension built up loses its punch.

But rest assured, outside of the demonic presence tormenting the Perrons, there are plenty of other moments to get creeped out over. A possessed porcelain doll from the prologue that's just as disturbing as Chucky manages to continue finding its way into the ghost hunt. And if that's not scary enough, there's also a wind-up box that picks up images of dead people.

At first glance, The Conjuring's not much different than any over paranormal scare-fest that's come before, but the end result musters up a more effective haunting that fares better than those out for blood and unnecessary shocks. 

GRADE: B+ (8/10)