It Came From The Cineplex: The Conjuring 2

The Conjuring 2 was written by James Wan, Chad Hayes, Carey Hayes and David Leslie Johnson (it took four people to write this?). It was directed by James Wan.

Chad and Carey Hayes are twins and writing partners who seem to specialize in horror films. They previously wrote First Daughter (OK, so that one wasn't a horror film per se, although it was horrible), House of Wax, The Reaping, Whiteout and The Conjuring. Johnson wrote Orphan (an underrated film I liked quite a bit), Red Riding Hood and Wrath Of The Titans. He also wrote a couple of episodes of The Walking Dead (Chupacabra and Triggerfinger).

James Wan directed Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious, The Conjuring, Insidious: Chapter 2 and Furious 7. He's also currently directing the upcoming Aquaman movie for Warner Bros.

As you might expect from the title, it's a sequel to 2013's The Conjuring, a very successful little horror film that wracked up an astonishing $137 MILLION dollars! Holy crap! I'm surprised it's taken this long to pump out a sequel!

The film stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, reprising their roles of real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. It deals with another incident from the Warren's case files, this time the Enfield Poltergeist, which took place in England from 1977 to 1979.

The Conjuring 2 features a few genuinely creepy moments which elevate it above most so-called "scary" films. The Demonic Nun in particular was quite effective, and there's a feeling of darkness and dread that saturates the entire movie.

Like many movies of this ilk, this one claims it's based on a true story. I have absolutely no problem believing that. I'm positive it's true that this was based on a story.

The movie's already a hit, and Warner Bros. has announced that the Demonic Nun featured in the film will be getting her own spinoff, titled— what else— The Nun. I can see the tag line on the poster now: "Nun Will Survive." Sorry, sorry! This is getting to be a habit! Forgive me, I didn't mean to wimple out! 

Oddly enough the Demonic Nun character wasn't in the original script, as the monster was going to be a typical horned devil-like thing. It wasn't until March 2016 that director James Wan had a dream about a scary nun, and decided to add the character to the film during reshoots.

The Conjuring spinoff Annabelle is also getting a sequel, and The Conjuring 3 is no doubt right around the corner. There's seemingly no stopping this horrific franchise!

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
We begin with a flashback to 1974 as real life ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren investigate the Amityville murders, their most famous and celebrated case. During a seance in the actual Amityville house, Lorraine has a vision of Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdering his family. She also sees the figure of a ghastly Demonic Nun, who impales her husband Ed on a jagged splinter of wood. 

Lorraine's so traumatized by both the brutality of the Amityville case and the vision of Ed's death that she wants to quit the paranormal investigating biz.

We then jump forward to 1977, where we meet the Hodgson family, who live in Enfield, England. Peggy Hodgson's a single mom trying to raise her four kids in a dilapidated council house (public housing, for us non-Brits). Her eleven year old daughter Janet begins experiencing odd happenings around the house. Little things like nightmares, sleepwalking and teleporting from her second floor bedroom to the living room below. You know, the usual.

This is no shy ghost, as it flings furniture around in front of Peggy, the neighbors and even the police! That's a refreshing change from most horror films, where the ghosts suffer from performance anxiety and won't appear in front of a crowd. When the ghost begins physically biting Janet, Peggy is reluctantly forced to seek help.

A TV reporter brings noted paranormal expert Maurice Grosse to the Hodgson house to investigate the case. They interview Janet, who begins speaking in a deep, evil voice. Apparently she's being possessed by the spirit of Bill Wilkins, the previous owner of the house, who died in a ratty chair in the living room years before. Bill doesn't seem to realize he's dead, and doesn't take kindly to the Hodgson's trespassing on his property. Wow, even the ghosts of old men want you off their lawns! Most normal humans would hightail it out of there after receiving an eviction notice from an angry ghost, but not this family! There's still over an hour of runtime left at this point, so they decide to stay.

The case eventually reaches the Catholic church, which orders the Warrens to fly to England to investigate. Lorraine doesn't want to go, due to her visions of Ed's death. Ed assures her there's nothing to worry about, and promises they'll go only as consultants, and won't get involved. Lorraine's still leery about going, and later that day she has another vision of the Demonic Nun. In her trancelike state Lorraine slashes at the bible she's been reading. She realizes the Hodgson's are in mortal danger, and reluctantly agrees to go.

The Warrens arrive in England and meet the Hodgson family. They speak with Maurice Grosse, who's convinced the case is real. His colleague, noted paranormal debunker Anita Gregory, believes Janet is faking her possession.

Ed interviews Janet, who becomes possessed by Wilkins almost on cue. Once again he claims the Enfield house belongs to him, and wants the Hodgsons gone. The Warrens witness several more events, including spectral biting and levitation. When Bill Wilkins completely trashes the Hodgson's kitchen, they're finally convinced.

The Warrens are ready to contact the church and give the Enfield Haunting two thumbs up, when Anita Gregory shows them a videotape she made. The tape shows Janet deliberately wrecking the kitchen, clearly not under any demonic influence (although how a small girl managed to so thoroughly demolish the room isn't mentioned). The disappointed Warrens leave the Hodgson's house and head back to America.

While waiting for their train, the Warrens feel something's not right. They review the taped interviews and realize that the ghost of Bill Wilkins is only a pawn, being manipulated by the vastly more powerful Demonic Nun— the one who's been haunting Lorraine's visions. They leave the train and head back.

At the Hodgson's, Janet reveals to her older sister that she did indeed trash the kitchen, but only because the demon threatened to kill her family if she didn't figure out a way to get rid of the Warrens. Just then Janet becomes repossessed (heh), and locks everyone out of the house. The Warrens return, and Ed breaks into the basement. As he makes his way upstairs, the Demonic Nun tries its best to kill him, even temporarily blinding him by bursting a steam pipe.

Lightning strikes a tree in front of the house, leaving a deadly sharp, jagged stump. Lorraine realizes it's the same stump that impaled Ed in her vision. She realizes she could banish the Demon back to Hell if only she knew its name. She remembers writing the Demon's name in her bible during one of her visions. She gets it out and sees the name "Valak" slashed across several pages. Lorraine enters the house in a desperate attempt to save Ed.

The half-blind Ed finds the possessed Janet in her bedroom, standing in an open window and ready to leap onto the jagged tree stump below. As she jumps, Ed grabs her with one hand while holding onto the bedroom curtain with the other. The curtain begins ripping, threatening to send them both hurtling down onto the tree stump.

Lorraine enters the room and the Demonic Nun, aka Valak, psychically pins her against the wall. She calls the demon by name, and manages to condemn it back to Hell. As it's sucked into the void, its hold on Lorraine is loosened. She grabs Ed, who pulls the now unpossessed Janet back inside.

We then see the Warrens back home in America, where Ed places a zoetrope from the Enfield house in his museum of haunted artifacts.

Thoughts:

• This is some extreme nitpicking, but whatever. The name of the movie is The Conjuring 2, but what exactly is being conjured here? The ghost of Bill Wilkins? The Demonic Nun? Both seemed to appear on their own without anyone "conjuring" them up.

The original film shared this same problem. 

• If you're a regular reader of my blog (as millions are), you know of my hatred of watered-down PG-13 "horror films." You know, movies that are sanitized for audience protection, so teens can see them and pump up the box office take.

I naturally assumed The Conjuring 2 was another one of these anemic films. Imagine my surprise when I found out it's actually rated R. Why, I have absolutely no idea. There's no nudity, little or no cursing, and absolutely no blood or gore. There's not even much in the way of violence. 

I'm wondering if has something to do with the demonic possession angle? Do movies that feature possessed children (like The Exorcist) automatically get an R rating?

• Like the previous film, this one proudly trumpets the fact that it's based on a true story that was documented by real-life ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren.

The film begins with a flashback to the Warren's investigation of the Amityville murders, which was their most famous case and also supposedly a true story. However, the so-called "Amityville Horror" has been thoroughly debunked over the years, as several members of the Lutz family have freely admitted they made up the whole thing for monetary gain.

If the Warren's signature case is a bunch of hooey, what does that say about the rest of them?

Amazingly the movie actually touches on this topic, as the Warrens appear on a talk show and a fellow guest accuses them of being frauds. Ed defends himself by saying that while the Lutz family made up the general story, there were many other elements of the Amityville case that were authentic.

It's a valiant effort on the part of the writers to hand-wave the problem away, but it fails miserably.

The filmmakers desperately want us to believe that the Enfield Poltergeist case really happened as well, but the cold hard truth is that it didn't. Not as shown, that is. It's now believed that the entire incident was a hoax, perpetrated by Janet Hodgson and her older sister, who was able to speak in a deep, "demonic" voice. In fact Janet has even admitted to faking many of the supernatural incidents that occurred in the house.

Additionally the Warrens were barely involved with the case in real life, although several other paranormal experts were, and swore the incidents were authentic.

If you're still on the fence about the veracity of the case, take a look at this. It's a series of still photos allegedly showing young Janet Hodgson "levitating" while being possessed. Ahem. Apparently my sister and I levitated in our bedrooms quite a bit as kids, and didn't even realize it.

It's perfectly fine to be a fan of these films and stories. Just remember though that they're stories, and have little or nothing to do with reality.

• Filming on The Conjuring 2 began on September 21, 2015 in LA. Due to the inexplicable series of events that plagued the production of the first film, a priest was brought in to bless the movie. Ouch! I just sprained my eyes rolling them so hard!

• Whenever a film is set in the past, it's a given there are going to be anachronisms. I didn't spot many in The Conjuring 2. The fact that the majority of the film's set in England may have something to do with that. After all, few Americans know what life in England was like in 1977. The only anachronism I spotted were the lights on the Hodgson's Xmas tree. They appeared to be small LED bulbs, which weren't widely used in Xmas decorations until the 1990s. 

• At the beginning of the film, Janet and a friend are caught smoking at school by a teacher. There's something really odd about the cigarette that Janet's holding. The end is conical, and has a glowing red tip even when no one's puffing away on it. I'm not a smoker, but I'm pretty sure cigs don't work that way. 

I'm assuming the filmmakers didn't want to give a real cigarette to a kid, so they whipped up a fake looking prop.

• It's nice to know that Transatlantic travel is apparently a thing in the afterlife! Lorraine is first haunted by the Demonic Nun in America, and later it pops up to pester the Hodgsons in England. Now that's a well traveled demon!

• The filmmakers did a terrific job of recreating the Enfield house, right down to the David Soul (remember him?) posters on the walls of Janet's bedroom. 

• The Big Bad in the movie is a demon named Valak, who for some reason takes the form of a terrifying, undead Demonic Nun. I think maybe it does this to unsettle Lorraine, who was raised a Catholic?

Valak's fairly scary as movie monsters go, but she (it?) would have been even more frightening if she didn't resemble Marilyn Manson in a habit. Or worse, Brain Guy from Mystery Science Theater 3000!

• Looks like someone really likes The Shining.

• At one point Lorraine finds Ed in the living room, putting the finishing touches on a painting. He says he was having trouble sleeping, and so got up early to paint the image he kept seeing in his head. Lorraine's unnerved to see him painting the terrifying Demonic Nun from her visions.

Who knew Ed was such an accomplished portrait artist? Even stranger, he's as calm and soothing as Bob Ross during this scene, as if painting a ghoulish religious figure is the most normal thing in the world.

• The demon's name, "Valak," appears several times inside the Warren's home. We first see it as Ed works on his painting. The letters "V-A-L-A and K" hang from the window behind him. Later we see the Warren's daughter Judy making bracelets out of lettered beads in the living room. Three of her bracelets spell out "Valak." The last time we see it is in the Warren's library. There are five wooden letters placed randomly on the bookshelves. The letters are— you guessed it— "V-A-L-A and K" again.

It's not really clear why these instances of the demon's name kept popping up in the Warren's house, especially since they hadn't even agreed to take on the Enfield case yet. And why would Lorraine have a decorative "V" and "K" on her shelf, when those letters don't appear in any of her family's names? Maybe Lorraine (and her daughter too?) sensed the name in her visions, and began subconsciously arranging letters in her home? 

• One last thing about our friend Valak— he's apparently real. Well, real in the sense that he's part of demonic mythology, that is. Several ancient texts, including the Dictionnaire Infernal, Pseudomonarchia Deamonum and the Book Of Goetia all mention a demon named Valak (sorry, no mention of Ash's Necronomicon Ex-Mortis).

Valak was (is?) supposedly a big deal, as he's described as the President Of Hell. Good gig! He also commanded thirty legions of demons, and was believed to be very powerful. 

There's just one catch— he didn't look like a scary nun. Instead he usually took the form of a child with angel wings, who rode a two headed dragon.

• When Maurice Grosse first records Janet/Bill, he answers a few questions and then grunts some seemingly random words, such as "I'M," "IT," "LET," and "LEAVE!" 

A few days later Ed "interviews" Bill and asks why he doesn't just leave. Bill moans and again spews out some more incongruent words— "trapped," "won't" and "me."

Later on Ed realizes Bill is sending them a secret message. He takes the two separate taped interviews and plays them at the same time. The random words then line up to say, "I'M trapped! IT won't LET me LEAVE!" 

Gosh, Bill, that was much, much easier than simply saying the whole sentence to begin with. Lucky for Ol' Dead Bill that Ed was smart enough to figure out his secret code. And kudos to the ghost of a seventy two year old man for being technologically savvy enough to split his plea for help across two separate tape recorders!

Bill also recites some sort of riddle, which goes something like "It's something you didn't choose, but you own it for life." Lorraine correctly figures out the answer is "your name." She then realizes they'll have power over the demon if they can figure out it's name. She then remembers she wrote (well, slashed) the demon's name in her bible, and discovers it's "Valak."

Again, why did Bill have to be so cryptic here? Why couldn't he have just told Lorraine the demon's name? I suppose we could say it may have been because Valak was hanging around listening, and wouldn't have let Bill simply tell them what they needed to know.

Ed and Lorraine then realize Bill is only a pawn, being manipulated by the even stronger and more malevolent Demonic Nun. So I guess bullying persists even into the afterlife. How depressing.

• The Enfield Haunting takes place during the Christmas holiday, and disrupts the Hodgson's celebration. Ed tries to cheer up the kids by singing Can't Help Falling In Love while doing his best Elvis impression. Lorraine looks on, realizing how lucky she is to be married to Ed.

It's a bold move to put such a scene in a horror film, but you know what? It works! It could have been the most cringe-worthy scene ever in the hands of lesser actors, but Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga pull it off. Plus Wilson can actually sing (I assume that was him singing, that is)!

• The film ratchets up the tension by having Lorraine experience a vision of Ed dying, so the audience will spend the rest of the runtime worrying about him. A few things here:

First of all, there's no way in hell Ed was ever going to die in this film. Not when there are still additional sequels to make!

Secondly, this film is allegedly based on real events, and we know Ed Warren didn't die in Enfield.

Lastly, at one point Ed actually is in danger, but ultimately Lorraine saves him. So her highly publicized visions are pretty much worthless then, if they don't necessarily come true or can be easily changed.

• Paranormal debunker Anita Gregory shows the Warrens a video of Janet purposely trashing the Hodgson family's kitchen, proving that the entire incident was just a hoax. The disappointed Warrens reluctantly decide to head back to America.

Um… what about the fact that a small eleven year old girl was able to pick up a heavy kitchen table by herself and hurl it through a window? What is she, bionic? Surely that was worth a writeup!

• The Hodgson's youngest son Billy has a zoetrope that displays an animated figure of the Crooked Man as it plays the nursery rhyme There Was A Crooked Man. Near the end of the film when Ed is trying to save Janet, the Crooked Man from the zoetrope somehow comes to life and tries to stop him.

I have no idea why the filmmakers decided to shoehorn this character into the story. We already had Bill Wilkins and the Demonic Nun— adding yet a third monster muddied the waters even more. No wonder the ghosts want the Hodgson's out of the house. It's getting right crowded in there! You could remove the Crooked Man completely from the film and it wouldn't affect the plot one bit.

Plus what the hell is the Crooked Man supposed to be? Is he a ghost or demon who took the form of the nursery rhyme? Or are we supposed to believe the animated character somehow came to life and sprang out of the zoetrope? Apparently not even the director knows, as his fleeting appearances are never addressed.

Also, the Crooked Man looks completely out of place in the movie. Bill Wilkins looks like a decrepit old man, and the Demonic Nun looks like... well, like a scary demonic nun. They fit in with the established world.

The Crooked Man looks like he wondered off the set of a Tim Burton film. He looks more like a cartoon than a "realistic" ghost, reminiscent of the sketchy monster in The Babadook (a film that everyone but me seems to love). Even worse, he has a jerky, stop motion animated look to his movements. I think that was intentional, to show he was a cartoon come to life, but the effect failed miserably.

• For such a terrifying and powerful entity, Valak was surprisingly easy to beat. In the film's climax, Valak uses the Force to pin Lorraine to the wall of Janet's bedroom, while it tries to shove Ed out the window. Lorraine shouts, "Valak the Destroyer! I banish you to Hell!" and POOF! Valak gets sucked back into the abyss from whence it came. Well that was certainly easy! And disappointing. Somehow I was expecting a more prolonged good vs. evil battle.

• When Ed places the haunted zoetrope in his trophy room, you can see the horrifying Annabelle doll in a case in the background. The doll appeared briefly in a similar scene at the end of The Conjuring.

Annabelle was sort of a prequel to The Conjuring, although the Warrens don't bother to show up at all in Annabelle in the film at all. It's connection to the franchise is tenuous at best.

The Warrens really did keep a haunted Annabelle doll in a locked glass case in their trophy room. The real life Annabelle was a Raggedy Ann doll though, not that horrific abomination seen in the film.

The Conjuring 2 pulls off the difficult feat of being better than the original, and features a few genuinely creepy moments, especially those involving the Demonic Nun. Ignore all the "based on actual incidents" hype and just enjoy the story. It's worth a look on home video, but I wouldn't run any red lights to hurry to the cineplex. I gave the original film a B-, which in retrospect was way too high. It deserved a C at best. So I'm retroactively lowering the grade of the original and giving The Conjuring 2 a B-.

It Came From The Cineplex: Annabelle

Annabelle was written by Gary Dauberman and directed by John R. Leonetti. 

Leonetti's had a long career as a cinematographer, and Annabelle marks just his third time in the director's chair. He previously directed Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and The Butterfly Effect 2. That should tell you everything you need to know about this film.

Annabelle is a prequel of sorts to 2013's The Conjuring, but its connection to that film is tenuous at best. In The Conjuring, a family experiencing supernatural attacks contacts famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens agree to take their case, having just finished an investigation involving a possessed doll named Annabelle. 

There's a brief scene in which the owner of the doll describes how it seemed to move by itself and move from room to room. At the end of the movie we see the Annabelle doll sitting inside a glass case in the Warren's supernatural trophy room.

And that's it! That's the extent of the connection between the two films. The Warrens don't even bother to make an appearance in this movie. The scene of the woman describing Annabelle's shenanigans pops up at the very beginning of the film, but I can't tell if it's the same footage from The Conjuring or if they reshot it. I'd have to watch both films again to be sure, and that ain't happening.

Another preposterous supernatural film that the producers assure us was based on true events (wink wink). 

It's a pretty standard "evil doll" story that's not particularly scary and borrows liberally from many other films.

EVIL SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
In 1967, happy young couple Mia and John Form are expecting their first baby. John gives Mia a surprise– a large, ghastly antique porcelain doll she's been hunting for, which she names Annabelle. 

The Form's lives are turned upside down when their next door neighbors are brutally murdered by their estranged daughter and her boyfriend, who are members of a satanic cult. Mia is also attacked and injured by the cultists. The police arrive and shoot the male cultist, while the female kills herself while clutching the Annabelle doll. As she lays dying, blood from her wounds drips into the doll's eye. Ruh-roh!

Mia survives the attack but is ordered to spend the rest of her pregnancy in bed. She echoes the audience's sentiments and tells John she can't bear to look at the Annabelle doll anymore, as her attacker was clutching it when she died. John stuffs Annabelle into a trash can. Shortly after Mia is home alone when a fire starts in the kitchen. She narrowly escapes, and the trauma induces her labor. She gives birth to a daughter she names Lea. 

Mia feels there are too many bad memories in their old home, so they move to an ominous apartment building in the city. As she's unpacking, Mia is surprised to find Annabelle in one of the boxes. Instead of pitching the hideous thing into the incinerator, she shrugs and sets it on the shelf again. As if on cue, supernatural occurrences begin happening in their new home.

Mia meets a lady named Evelyn who runs a nearby bookstore. Evelyn seems to know way more than she should about Mia and her situation and gives her a book about satanic cults. Mia reads the book and determines that Annabelle is possessed by a demon that wants Lea's soul. She gives Annabelle to their priest, Father Perez, and asks him to destroy it for her.

Father Perez takes Annabelle to the church, but is attacked by the ghost of the female cultist, who steals the doll. He warns John that it's Mia's soul that the demon wants, not Lea's. John races home and finds Mia standing in the window, clutching Annabelle. She's ready to jump and sacrifice her soul in order to save Lea. At the last second Evelyn grabs Annabelle and jumps out the window. She willingly offered her soul to the demon to atone for causing her own daughter's death years before.

The film ends with Annabelle– complete with pallid gray skin and horrible bloodshot eyes– being bought by a doll collector.

Thoughts:
• If you remove the evil doll from the equation, the general plot of the film bears more than a slight resemblance to that of Rosemary's Baby. 

You've got your young woman struggling with a difficult pregnancy, she and her husband moving to a strange new apartment, an odd neighbor who may or may not have sinister motives, supernatural occurrences that may all be in the heroine's mind... it's all very similar.

Also, the two main characters in Annabelle are named Mia and John. The main actors in Rosemary's Baby were Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. Coincidence, or knowing wink to the audience?

One last possible, and admittedly tenuous connection: Rosemary's Baby was directed by Roman Polanski. In 1969, Polanski's pregnant wife Sharon Tate was attacked and murdered by members of the Manson Family, in an incident very much like the beginning of Annabelle.

• The film is set in 1967, so you know what that means! Historical Inaccuracies! 

Mia hears a disturbance coming from next door, and wakes John. He goes to investigate and comes running back a few seconds later, telling Mia to call an ambulance. She picks up the phone and says, "Hello, 911?"

The 911 system was first put into place in 1968 in New York City, but many cities didn't implement it until well into the 1980s. California, where the film is set, adopted the system in 1985. Whoops!

After Mia is stabbed by the intruders, John takes her to the hospital, where she gets a sonogram. 

The sonogram was developed in Scotland in 1956, but wasn't widely used in the U.S. until the mid to late 1970s. Whoops again!

There's a scene in which John brings home a bag full of groceries to the pregnant Mia, who's having cravings. There's a bag of Taco Flavored Doritos prominently placed on the kitchen table. It practically fills the entire screen!

Unfortunately Doritos didn't introduce their taco flavor until 1968. Whoops yet again!

• After the stabbing incident, the doctor orders Mia to stay in bed for the remainder of her pregnancy. Of course she does so for one or two scenes before seemingly ignoring this advice, galavanting around the apartment at will. 

• The real (wink wink) Annabelle was actually a Raggedy Ann doll. The movie version is an off-putting, hideous porcelain thing with a terrifying, leering face. Everything about it, from its expression to its proportions, just seems unpleasant and downright wrong. Was this look intentional, or were the filmmakers not able to get the rights to use a Raggedy Ann doll?

I'm guessing that a cute doll, while technically accurate (wink wink), just wouldn't have been very scary. It'd be hard to take an evil Raggedy Ann seriously.

Unfortunately I think they made the Annabelle doll look a little too sinister. Almost comically so. When John surprises Mia, who's an avid doll collector, with Annabelle she gushes over it, saying she's been looking for one for years. The idea that anyone in their right mind would intentionally want such a hideous looking thing is laughable.

• After Mia's attack– in which her bloody assailant died while clutching Annabelle– she understandably demands the doll be destroyed. John tosses it into the trash. When they move to their new apartment, Annabelle mysteriously reappears.

Instead of destroying the goddamned thing with fire like a normal person would, she makes a complete and incomprehensible 180º turn and decides to keep Annabelle. Never mind that the doll is now dirty and sooty, it's deathly-gray face and rictus grin even more horrifying than before. she's got to have it, no arguments!

This pulled me right out of the film. It was so out of character, so unlike what a real person would do that it was a real deal breaker for me. The only reason for Mia to change her mind about the doll is because the script said so. There was no way for the story to commence if she didn't let the doll back in the house, so damn the motivation! Full speed ahead!

• What was the deal with the creepy stair kids? 

Mia meets two kids who also live in her building, and while they weren't particularly malevolent, there was something a little bit off about them. Later she finds they drew a series of pictures depicting Lea's baby carriage being hit by a truck (!).

I assumed they were part of some subplot, but they promptly disappear from the film and are never seen again.

• Mia goes down to the dark, dripping and scary basement of their new apartment. While there, she experiences terrifying supernatural visions of a sinister baby carriage and a demonic figure that may or may not be real. 

She runs to the elevator and frantically pushes the buttons before the demon can grab her. The doors take an agonizingly long time to close, and when they open up again, she's still in the hellish basement! This happens several more times as she's seemingly trapped, before she finally manages to escape to the floors above.

Credit where credit's due– these scenes were very well done and very effective and the only reasonably scary part of the entire movie.

• Mia tells John that she thinks Annabelle is possessed by a demon, and without even blinking he calls Father Perez for advice. 

It seemed to me like John accepted the idea of a possessed doll a little too quickly. For a minute I thought maybe he was just going along with Mia to calm her down until he could get her checked into an asylum.

• I was starting to suspect that Mia's friend Evelyn was somehow involved with the cult, which would have fit in nicely with the Rosemary's Baby parallels. She was nice and all, but there was this vaguely sinister undercurrent about her. Especially near the end when Lea went missing and she told Mia to forget about her and they'd "find her later." Apparently she was just a red herring.

• Speaking of Evelyn– what the hell (literally) happened to her at the end?

Annabelle is possessed by a demon that wants a soul. Mia is willing to give it hers to save Lea, but at the last second Evelyn offers up hers instead. She grabs Annabelle and leaps out the window with her, dying on the hard pavement below. The demon then presumably vacuums up her soul.

So what happens to Evelyn's soul now? Is it in hell with the demon for all eternity? What kind of a god would allow something like that to happen? 

We're told that Evelyn caused her daughter Ruby's death in a car accident. Is this her punishment for that event? Harsh!

• I have to wonder if the police are keeping a wary eye on Mia and John now. In just a few months time they've been tangentially involved in the deaths of five people, three of which died in their home (their neighbors, their neighbor's daughter and her boyfriend, and now Evelyn). This couple is bad news!

Annabelle is a by-the-numbers evil doll movie that offers few scares and cribs liberally from Rosemary's Baby. If you're hankering for a possessed doll film, you're better off sticking with Chucky. I give it a B-.

It Came From The Cineplex: The Conjuring

The Conjuring is the latest in a long, long line of haunted house films. It's a mildly scary tale and a stylistic throwback to horror movies of the 1970s. It was directed by James Wan, who also directed Saw and Insidious.

The film stars Patrick Wilson (Watchmen, Insidious) and Vera Farmiga (there's something vera farmiga about her…) as Ed and Lorraine Warren, and Lily Taylor (who I've had a crush on since the 1990s) and Ron Livingston (of Office Space fame!) as Carolyn and Roger Perron, owners of the haunted house.

The characters are all patterned after real people, especially the Warrens, who were supernatural researchers involved in a number of investigations throughout the 1970s, including the infamous Amityville Horror case.

Like many movies of this ilk, it begins with a warning that it's based on true events (insert eye roll here), which I assume is supposed to make the film seem scarier. That trick never works!

Actually now that I think about it, I bet it is a true story. It's no doubt true that someone made up a story and then based a movie on it.

At least one theater out there posted this sign at the entrance to the film.

I must have seen a different movie, because the one I saw wasn't psychologically or emotionally disturbing and I didn't experience any unusual circumstances after seeing it. Nor did I feel the need to seek support from Father Perez.

I'm betting that this sign was some kind of modern day William Castle-like trick, designed to get people all worked up about the film. If you tell people a movie's so scary they're going to need a priest after seeing it, they'll find a way to convince themselves it's true.

The Conjuring has done very well at the box office, racking up over one hundred million dollars so far. You know what that means! Yep, sequel! So if they make a sequel, will it also be a "true" story, or will it be made up? Or will it be another "case" from the files of the Warrens?

SCARY SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:

You know the drill by now— the Perron family moves into a new house, weird stuff starts happening, they call in ghost specialists Ed and Lorraine Warren, they battle the spooks, clean out the house and then everything's OK.

Pros:

• I liked the old school feel of the film. Not only is it set in the 1970s, but the feel and look of the film are old school as well. There didn't seem to be a lot of CGI effects on display either, which is a plus. I'm sure it's there, but if so it was used sparingly.

Speaking of the 1970s era, all through the movie Carolyn Perron keeps waking up to find her arms and legs mysteriously covered in bruises (spoooooky!). She goes to the doctor, who diagnoses the bruises as a simple iron deficiency. How times have changed. It occurred to me while watching the film that if it took place in the current day, the minute Carolyn showed the doctor her bruises he'd send her to a women's shelter, have her husband arrested and hand the five kids over to the state! 

• At one point in the film the Perron kids are watching the Brady Bunch on TV, specifically the episode Will The Real Jan Brady Please Stand Up? The film sets the date as November 1st, 1971. That particular Brady Bunch episode originally aired on January 15, 1971, so it's entirely possible the kids could have been watching it. Kudos to the producers for picking (either deliberately or by accident) a plausible episode. A lot of period films get little details like that wrong.

• I liked Ed Warren's "haunted artifact" museum. There were lots of cool items in it that I wanted to see and learn more about.

Cons:

• I hate to be a Title Literalist, but… the film's called The Conjuring. What exactly is being conjured here? The witch demon? Who conjured her, or any of the other ghosts for that matter? No one that I can see. The supernatural events just started happening on their own as soon as someone new moved into the house.

• The plot is very familiar and hits all the usual notes for modern horror films of this ilk. If you've seen The Amityville Horror, The Haunting In Connecticut, Insidious or Poltergeist, then you've seen this film.

At times it feels like the movie's ticking items off a checklist.

• A normal everyday family begins a new chapter in their lives by moving into a new home. 

• The home is old, somewhat dilapidated and in need or repair.

• Strange events that can be easily explained begin. 

• The events gradually escalate until they disrupt the lives of the family. 

• The family sunk everything they had into the home and can't afford to move. 

• The family pet disappears or dies. Birds also fly into the side of the house and kill themselves. 

• Experts are called in. They're initially skeptical that the supernatural is involved, but agree to check it out. 

• The Experts set up monitoring devices. 

• The Experts witness the supernatural happenings first hand and are convinced. 

• There's a final confrontation between the Experts and the forces of evil. 

• The family moves out of the cursed house and goes on with their lives.

Every one of these events happens in the movie, and every other modern haunted house film you've ever seen.

• The Perron family seem to accept the supernatural happenings and the Warren's explanations awfully quickly. I'm of two minds about this. When characters seem to buy into a ludicrous premise such as this too easily, I roll my eyes and say, "Psyeah, right." On the other hand, when it takes the characters an hour to believe in something the audience already knows is true, I get bored and restless. I admit there's no easy answer to this conundrum.

• Carolyn Perron shows Lorraine Warren a family photo. Carolyn cherishes the photo and calls it their One Perfect Day (Uh-oh! I smell a plot point!). Unfortunately it's one of the worst Photoshop jobs I've ever seen. 

It's supposed to be a photo of the Perrons at the beach, but it looks for all the world like they posed indoors and were crudely cut out and pasted into a shot of the sky. Where the hell's the horizon? Was this beach at the top of a mile-high mountain? Why do multi-million dollar movies always have such awful Photoshopped photos in them? I'd be fired if I turned in such subpar work.

• The Perron girls like to play a game called Hide & Clap (or something), a variation of Hide & Seek. The subject is blindfolded and spun around as the other players run and hide. The subject then has to blindly feel their way through the house trying to find the other players by asking them to clap occasionally (Marco Polo-style). A more stupefyingly deadly game I've never seen.

At one point one of the girls trips over a bunch of boxes on the floor while groping about blindly. Later one of the kids talks Carolyn herself into playing, and she comes this close to blindly toppling over an upper stair railing! Take off the goddamned blindfold before you all break your necks!

• Ed Warren keeps a museum of haunted and possessed artifacts in a room in his home. The items ooze so much evil and malevolence that the room is blessed by a priest once a month as a precaution. So where do the Warrens store this evil treasure trove? In a vault in the basement? In a lead-lined room? A secret government warehouse? Nope! It's all stored in what appears to be a spare bedroom of their home, protected by a particle board door with a simple latch. If I had a room full of evil tchotchkes like that I think I'd have them locked up a bit more securely. 

• In the third act, Carolyn Perron becomes possessed by an evil witch slash demon called Bathsheba, and tries to murder two of her children. Ed Warren says she needs an immediate exorcism, but the priest on his payroll is "too far away" to get there in time. Even though Warren admits he's not ordained or authorized to perform an exorcism, he feels he has no choice and does so anyway. In the end he's successful in driving the demon from Carolyn's body.

But how? He ain't a priest. I wouldn't think a demon would listen to a layman trying to evict it. It'd be like me trying to arrest the lady who lets her dog crap on my lawn every morning. She'd snap her fingers in my face, say "You ain't no cop" and go about her business. It seems to me like a demon would only listen to a man of the cloth, someone with some religious authority. Is simply hearing the words enough to drive a demon out?

The Conjuring has style and one or two genuine scares, but for the most part it's a walk down a very well-trodden path. I give it a B-.