Since I’ve recently reviewed the Annabelle trilogy and The Nun (2018), and had already reviewed The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, I thought I might as well review the other 2 The Conjuring movies. I re-watched the first one and was surprised to find it somewhat better than I remembered, but it was still far from perfect. I also found it hard to ignore the allegations about the Warrens when they were doing their lovey dovey idealized Christian couple shtick. Needless to say, there will be SPOILERS.
It's 1971, and the Perron family - Roger, Carolyn, their 5 daughters, and their dog - has just moved into a new house. However, they soon begin experiencing weird phenomena that keep getting worse. Desperate, they ask demonologist duo Ed and Lorraine Warren for help.
The movie opens with Annabelle and I didn't remember the intro being this long. Ed and Lorraine patiently explain to a couple of very dumb nurses (and their friend who stays silent the whole time) why letting the supposed ghost of a lonely little girl enter their creepy AF doll was a bad idea, and there are flashbacks to all the mayhem caused by the demonic entity attached to the doll. I will never understand why this first movie didn't just focus on Annabelle. I'm also having trouble with the timeline in relation to how this movie fits with Annabelle Comes Home, but that's the problem with prequels. The Perron family show themselves to be as dumb as the nurses because when they find a boarded up cellar, they... open it and go check it out. Shockingly, there are no hidden corpses in there, just junk. The haunting starts almost immediately, with bad smells, the clocks all stopping at 3:07, Carolyn finding bruises she doesn't remember getting, doors opening creakily by themselves, some of the daughters being pestered during the night, and the death of their dog, which doesn't freak them out nearly as much as it should have. Why weren't Roger and Carolyn worried for their daughters' safety? The dog didn't die of old age. They also take a while to react to all the weirdness. Carolyn dismissing her youngest daughter's ghost friend Rory as just a kid's joke made sense, but not the rest. The girls also love playing a game of hide-and-seek that allows the seeker to ask the ones hiding to clap to help finding them, which would've been perfect for some spooky situations if the movie hadn't decided to waste it. Really, I think there's only one instance of ghostly clapping and it's not even the evil one.
Anyway, while the Perron clan is dealing with their stinky, noisy squatter, Ed and Lorraine are giving lectures about their work. I had completely forgotten what they had said about Frenchie here, and it doesn't match the character as it would later appear in The Nun. Why did the prequel even include him? Just to explain how Valak found Lorraine? Given when that movie is set, the demon would've had more than enough time to find another vessel. Frenchie's exorcism took a toll on Lorraine, but that won't stop her from joining Ed when Carolyn tearfully asks them for help. The haunting has become more aggressive and the Perron are terrified, but they have nowhere else to go. The case this was based on was clearly bullshit, but it's supposed to be real in the movie; and yet, from Roger and Carolyn explaining what's been happening to the Warrens, their assistant Drew, and Brad, who's a cop and a sceptic, to the Warrens setting up their alleged scientific equipment to record the evidence needed to convince the Vatican to allow an exorcism, it all looked so fake. At one point, they go down to the cellar and we see the Warrens from Brad's POV as he films them, and maybe this was a recreation of a real video, because, again, the whole thing looks fake and straight out of some cheap "real" ghost hunting YouTube video. I think that's a result of the movie's attempt to appear more realistic. CGI and other special effects don't always make things better, but this style is too close to real-life hoaxes. That's no excuse for the scene where Lorraine talks to Carolyn about the Perron family's day at the beach, though. The audience can see she's actually having visions, but without that, the whole thing sounds like a classic fake psychic trick. Carolyn believing her was weird. Come on, she just saw a photograph of the family smiling at the beach, saying it was a great day was the easiest thing to do! This is pretty funny because the movie clearly doesn't want to portray Lorraine or Ed as charlatans, but that's how they come across more than once.
The Warrens identify the evil ghost trying to hurt the Perron family as a Satan-worshipping witch named Bathsheba Sherman who hanged herself after her husband caught her sacrificing their baby. However, before she died, she cursed all those who would live on her lands, which naturally include the Perron family's new home. The hour of her death? 3:07. To make matters worse, Bathsheba was related to one of the Salem witches, who, in the The Conjuring world, were real, dangerous witches who were rightfully executed. (Unsurprisingly, history would beg to differ on all counts...) Historical inaccuracy aside, I liked that the movie gave this haunting a backstory instead of having the entity be a nameless demon like in The Devil Made Me Do It. The fictional Bathsheba's curse caused many deaths in the house and in surrounding areas, all land that used to belong to her family. This means that Lorraine losing the matching necklace her daughter gave her in the spooky cellar is one of the worst things that could've happened. It's also pretty ridiculous, as you'd expect her to have noticed it was gone. Since she didn't, Bathsheba manages to use Annabelle to mess with Judy. Only, after the Warrens return, the doll turns out to be in its case with no sign of having come out, even though there was a shot of an empty case after Judy left her parents' haunted artifact room, and when she wasn't looking, so it wasn't for her benefit. I hate when movies do that. And, again, where does this movie stand in the timeline in relation to Annabelle Comes Home? This Judy didn't seem to have gone through the events of the third prequel, and that Judy didn't seem to have experienced this mini haunting. Moving on, the loss of the necklace wasn't the only thing Lorraine and Ed failed to notice. While they and their team were running around the house with their fancy instruments, Bathsheba was puking her demon goo into Carolyn's mouth, which means she's possessed. And what does she want? To force mothers to kill their children like she did with Rory's mother. Thankfully for everyone involved, Possessed Carolyn drives 2 of her daughters back to the house to kill them instead of just doing it at the motel room the family temporarily moved into. The Warrens, their team, and Roger follow them, and it's time for the final confrontation.
After a fight, Possessed Carolyn ends up tied to a chair in the cellar, covered with a sheet, which will remain in place for the first half of the exorcism. Now, Ed doesn't want to perform it himself, but there's no time to call a priest, so has to. He sounds pretty weak, but while Bathsheba may be a child killer, she's no bully, and so, she doesn't mock him, not even when he drops the holy water vial and it breaks. Possessed Carolyn spits blood under her sheet, gets turned upside down, and levitates all the way to the ceiling while pigeons throw themselves against the house upstairs. Much like with most elements of this haunting, it doesn't go on for that long and doesn't really achieve anything. Ed's embarrassing exorcist skills are no match for the demon witch, who frees her vessel and goes to get the youngest daughter, who's hiding in the space between walls near the cellar. The moment Lorraine started saying Carolyn had to fight the possession from within, I knew they were going back to that special day at the beach. Why would a memory have a greater effect on Carolyn than the terrified daughter she's about to kill? It may be stupid, but it works, Carolyn pukes the demon goo and all is well: Bathsheba has been vanquished, Lorraine gets her necklace back, and the Warrens get the Perron family's eternal gratitude. Ed even fixed Roger's old car! How lovely. It seems things weren't so peaceful in real life and instead of thanking them, Roger kicked the Warrens out of the house after a failed séance.
VERDICT
There are some scary scenes, mostly jump scares, however, the movie begins to lose its aura of spookiness the more the Warrens investigate and explain. I don't know why, but it did. It should've been a crescendo, as the audience finds out more and more, but instead the opposite happened. And while she does have a proper backstory, Bathsheba is almost animalesque, jumping on people and growling. She's definitely not as eloquent as Pazuzu, and shies away from trying to do some more permanent damage to her victims until it's time for the movie to end. Really, her body count is basically the Perron family dog, pigeons, and maybe a crow. The exorcism was lame - Ed sounded so weak, Bathsheba didn't even try to mess with their minds, and Carolyn's face was covered for more than half of it. The Conjuring isn't bad, but it's not great, either; basically an average horror movie whose strength is its leading duo.
By Danforth