The Conjuring: A Quiet Family’s Battle Of Evil and Faith 👻🦇😨😱📽

When the Perron Family moved into their idyllic farmhouse in Rhode Island in 1971, they would have never envisioned it being such a test of strength and fortitude for their faith, each other, or to question their existence in the world. This film is a sinister adaptation of the true events of a house that was branded by evil itself. Director, James Wan (Director of ‘Saw’), has built a villainous sanctuary around a macabre, but innocent looking farmhouse that is just waiting to unleash terror and fear to its new occupants. The darkness commences when the family dog refuses any entry into the house; he just sits on the porch and stares with extrasensory perception, at the unseen forces that are gaining strength for their demonic purposes. From there, it slowly intensifies when one of the girls of the Perron Family is savagely attacked in her sleep; she conveys to her sister who is sleeping in the same room as her, that there are spirits who are walking around the house with malicious and ingenuous intent. After several more nights of physical abuse in the house and family, the Perrons seek the professional help of Ed and Lorraine Warren, world expert paranormal investigators. From here, things really escalate into mayhem and mischief.

The whole atmosphere of the film is bumpy but keeps your attention. With its lavishly scary imagery of door creaking, and young girls dangling from their necks by ropes and hurling family portraits from the wall to their doom to the floor, it captures and controls your own suspense by taking hold of your own instincts as a spectator. The supposed spirits who haunt this stony farmhouse are violent and on a quest for vengeance and the consumption of innocence. One of the highlights of this film is when the spirit of a witch invades the body of the mother. It is here that an unnerving exorcism will swallow even the most skeptical and make one belittle his own doubt of the existence of the supernatural. I suppose that Mr. Wan’s gory intentions supersede that of his own expectations because he performs this scene with his superlative talent flawlessly. It leaves you breathless when the violence and tenacity comes to an abrupt halt that will leave an audience in dire need of a sequel. 

An infant portion of the film is based on the memoirs of one of the family members, Andrea Perron, the eldest of the five sisters, who recounts her and her family’s harrowing experiences in her mammoth epic trilogy, House of Darkness, House of Light; however, it primarily draws on the files of the Warren Family who attempted to remove the stains of evil from the house. Ed (now deceased) and Lorraine Warren (also deceased) are true, world-renowned paranormal investigators that also did extensive work with the Lutz family of the infamous Amityville Horror house in the state of New York. horrific encounters, there is that teenage innocence of exchange with children that prepares you for the chilling astonishment that awaits. The whole formulation of the film rings of passionate fear and disguise. There is no way to prepare for what is next; it arrives with the cynicism and fragrance of what the genre of horror demands. I do not think this film falls short of any expectant unholy revelations that the audience can, themselves, envisage. It is a torrid and necromantic film of dark vision and grizzled reality that reminds us of how our lives need to drink the light of good and redemption. It is a film of the struggle for victory and how it is NOT so blissfully acclaimed.

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© 2024, Mark Grago. All rights reserved.