The Conjuring

Welcome everyone to another edition of Phil Goes to the Movies, and today we are going to tackle the new horror movie, "The Conjuring". Honestly, i have pretty much have given up on going to see horror movies in theaters. Main reason is because its not worth paying 10 bucks to see some cheesy, cliche scary movie. You know, the ones I'm talking about, a group splitting up for no reason to search for the monster or killer, and all of the other illogical things the characters do in the movies. Well, lets get to the review:


The Conjuring- This movie gave me the goosebumps every time i saw the trailer or sneak previews. This movie is based of a true story from the files of real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, which tell their experiences helping a family being haunted by a demonic force. I watch many ghost specials on the discover channel or national geographic channel, so i recognized them almost immediately.

This movie sets the usual scene, a new family moving into a new home in the middle of no where, and the first night moving in the children play a game to past the time. This game is called hide and clap, you play hide and go seek, blind folded, and then if you're the "seeker" you ask for the "hiders" for three claps. During this game the children discover a cellar, which was boarded up in a closet, and after it was disturbed the haunting begins. The situations in this movie make sense and get around the cliches by simple, suttle scenes. It's late, the mother is getting for bed, when she hears someone clapping their hands together. She calls out to her childern, its late and they need to be in bed, and there's no time to play hide and clap. She checks on her children, whom are all sleeping soundly in their beds, and she hears a second set of clapping. She begins to investigate the house, which I believe anyone else in her position would do, and the tension in this scene is extremely high. I cannot talk about this scene anymore without ruining it for everyone else, but it scared the hell out of me!

The movie was very intense, and they played on the fears people have in the supernatural. Stephen King said in an interview there are three types of fears a person can experience. There's the creeps, horror, and terror. The creeps you get when you see a spider crawling along the floor. Horror is something you experience watching a monster chase a helpless victim. Terror, he explained, is when a person can't determine between a safety zone, where things can explained and rationalized, and am unexplained zone, a person cannot understand or truly identify the events happening before them.

This movie hands down dances all over terror by having literally everything you can expect in a ghost story. Ranging from things moving on their, demonic dolls, and even a possessed person. The movie had you on edge the entire time, and they didn't use cheap pop up scares, to frighten you. I mean there were a few, but it didnt rely heavily on them, like most horror films.

I wouldn't say this was the scariest movie i have ever seen, but it is definitely up there in the top.

Final Verdict- 8/10, this movie took its time literally terrorizing you, i would definitely suggest seeing this movie in theaters.

Thats it for now, until next time, this is Phil Goes to the Movies, so you don't have too!