The Conjuring series

Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2020) From its featureless opening scenes onward, Annabelle Comes Home is a dull stretch of a watch. I’d mutter something about this being a fall from grace for The Conjuring series, except for the obviousness that great movies leading to increasingly uninteresting sequels and spinoffs is what counts as normal in the horror genre. Amazingly enough, this remains a sequel-to-a-prequel-to-a-spinoff-to-a-sequel-to-an-adaptation-of-a-so-called-real-story. (Considering its callbacks to The Conjuring, Anabelle Comes Home is a derivative project that really wants you to remember the first film.) Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have extended supporting roles as bookends here, but much of the spotlight goes to the babysitter who’s stuck with the Warrens’ daughter and an evil doll trying to possess the both of them (along with a crew of nasties just to make this even more chaotic). To be fair, there’s a decent degree of polish to the 1970s recreation, Gary Dauberman’s workmanlike direction and the rather good cinematography—for all of its faults, Annabelle Comes Home isn’t a cheap straight-to-DVD sequel. But fair execution doesn’t really mitigate the derivative nature of the script, the uninspired jump scares or the feeling that we’re really trampling down whatever that was interesting about The Conjuring in the first place. Annabelle Comes Home strikes me as the kind of film meant to be seen three or four years after you’ve seen the original—long enough to want some of the same things, but distanced enough to not be compared with its predecessor too closely.

The Curse of La Llorona (2018)

The Curse of La Llorona (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2020) Slick, overproduced and yet so, so underwhelming, The Curse of La Llorona is about as ordinary a horror movie can be when it’s the result of dozens of other movies blended together. Mixing ethnic folk horror with demonic possession, evil-fighting priests and child endangerment (plus a single mother as hero!), it still can’t make any of those surefire elements spark. Plenty of jump scares from director Michael Chaves can’t compensate for a lacklustre script and rote elements. The only thing that mildly works is the ethnic atmosphere of Mexican folklore that set up La Llorona, but don’t expect too much here either—although I’m told the movie did good business in Latin communities. Linda Cardellini is wasted here and can’t rescue the film on her own. At least the images are clear, crisp and clean—but that’s not much of a comfort when they don’t show anything of much value. It’s a bit sad to see “The Conjuring universe” get less and less interesting at every successive movie in the series, but what else do you expect? The real horror villains are always the Hollywood studio executives.

The Nun (2018)

The Nun (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2019) The nice thing about having been raised Catholic is the appreciation that as a religion it’s got some excellent potential for horror worldbuilding—having the Vatican as an authority keeping tabs on demonic possession around the globe is by itself worth a few movies’ worth of material. The Nun is one of them, even if it’s not particularly good or bad at it. Efforts to tie the film to the overall Conjuring horror universe are perfunctory at best (and frankly, I think I’ve lost track of what The Nun is supposed to be: a prequel to The Conjuring 2 which was a sequel to a film based on a true story that has now spawned another series of spinoffs? Or something like that.)  The setup is, as usual, much more compelling than the execution: the idea of an Eastern Europe abbey leaking evil since it was bombed during WW2 is not bad at all, but what the film does with it is far more pedestrian. There are a few nice touches—Having Taissa Farmiga play in a spinoff of a series starring her sister Vera is kind of interesting, for instance, even if the film doesn’t do anything with that. Don’t peek too closely at the details either: While it’s satisfying to hear a character defiantly growling out “I’m French-Canadian,” his accent is pure European French. Oh well… The Nun feels like so much of other 2010s horror films—high concept, by-the-number execution with a few arresting visuals made possible only through a lot of CGI substituting for clever writing. It works as your slick weekly horror movie if you’re looking for that kind of ride, but it doesn’t strike a nerve either in lasting scares or conceptual audacity.

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2016) The good news, I suppose, is that while The Conjuring 2 is significantly less impressive than its predecessor, the first film was so good that it makes its sequel a fair horror movie rather than a great one. Moving the action in England but keeping the first film’s focus on a family, our likable married heroes and a gradual cranking up of the tension (although the original’s lack of gore is instantly exceeded by a very violent opening dream sequence), The Conjuring 2 is more of the same, but less surprisingly so. Director James Wan is the star here, expertly moving the camera to show (or not show) elements crucial to the tension. The London-set poor-neighborhood is less inspiring than the first film’s farmhouse, and the broken family not quite as likable either, but you can see the script going back to the first film’s strengths whenever it needs a boost. The result may be far more ordinary, but at least it avoids sinking into exploitation or nihilism like so many other horror movies—there’s a core of sheer decency to the single mom trying to keep her family together and the heroic Warren couple (Both Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are likable actors, and the Elvis scenes take their screen relationship to another level of sympathy), and it’s that kind of “this is why horrors are worth fighting” spirit that is all too often missing from cheap horror. This being said, while I was a vocal proponent of The Conjuring, I don’t expect to advocate for this sequel as much—it’s less of a surprise, of course, but it also looks as if it has a built-in public. I’m sure we’ll see a third film soon enough.

The Conjuring (2013)

The Conjuring (2013)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2014) There’s something to be said for a well-executed horror film even when it doesn’t try to reinvent the genre or leave the viewers with permanent trauma.  So it is that The Conjuring harkens back to simpler times, when ordinary people were imperilled by supernatural horrors and extraordinary people could come to help them out.  Here, the Perron family (two adults, five daughters) finds itself threatened by demonic forces shortly after moving into a dilapidated farmhouse in 1971.  Financially desperate and concerned by increasing signs of evil, they call upon paranormal investigators to investigate and hopefully solve the case with minimal loss of life.  It’s as basic a premise for a horror film as can be, but there’s a lot to be said for director James Wan’s approach to the material and the quality of the script: from the first few moments, The Conjuring is carefully controlled, beguiling in the way it sets up its characters, creepy in showing us the setting and well-accomplished in its visuals.  We’re never comfortable, especially when the characters are so sympathetic. (Lili Taylor has a substantial role as the matriarch while Ron Livingstone plays dutiful husband, but it’s Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga who are most compelling as the Warrens, carefully inhabiting roles halfway between credible people and unflappable demon-hunters.)  Like an un-ironic old-school classic, The Conjuring carefully ramps up its creepiness into chills into scares into full-blown horror… and remarkably enough without showing much gore, nudity or profanity.  There’s nothing really new here (nor is there much in terms of thematic depth), but in horror even more than in other genres, execution is key and this film nails down the fundamentals.  It works even better as an antidote for routine horror movies that fail to even provide the basic scares.  Even the comforting finale is exactly what the film (and the characters) needed.  Throw The Conjuring in with films such as Sinister and its prototype Insidious, and you’ve got a good argument for an ongoing revival of good American mainstream horror.