Movie Review: Conjuring

Note: Spoilers ahead! Read it at your own risk :)

The movie begins with the introduction of Ed and Lorraine Warren, Paranormal Investigators who are giving a presentation about various entities and demonic possession cases that they have investigated.

And parallel to that we see Carolyn and Roger Perron moving into their newly bought country house with their five daughters. But their family dog, Sadie does not come inside the house and keeps barking for some reason. Next day, Carolyn wakes up with a bruise in her leg and the family finds that Sadie is dead.

Upset about the dog's death, the youngest daughter April starts conversing with an entity called Rory and Cindy who was prone to sleepwalking starts her nocturnal activity once again. The girls see someone hiding behind the door while they sleep and they smell rotten meat all around the house. As the paranormal activity increases, Carolyn gets locked in the secret basement that they found on their first day, while a demonic entity attacks one of the daughters.

Carolyn meets Lorraine and Ed and requests them to help her family. They come and investigate and find that their house requires an exorcism. They further learn that the house had belonged to a witch name Bethseba who killed her own child. And they surmise that her spirit possesses mothers to kill their own child. 

This is supposed to be a true story and a real instance of spirit haunting. There is a raging controversy about the validity of the story but none of this will matter, once you start watching the movie. A taut and a racy screenplay keeps the story moving from one point to another in a fast pace.

It is scary but at no point, the eerie factor goes overboard. Despite cliched horror elements that included sleep walking, banging doors, creaking floors, demonic head banging and body slamming, the movie still managed to scare me.

Vera Farmiga excels as Lorraine, a clairvoyant turned paranormal investigator who sees things and Lily Taylor makes a perfect mother who is worried about her family and her final possession scene is definitely not for a faint heart.

So overall this is a good movie for the theatre but don't watch it at home especially if you are alone.