The Conjuring (2013)
The Conjuring: Starting Out With A Bang | 4/5
Written by Noah Dietz: 4/2/2025
I wanted to do a theme for the month of April, and I felt like watching and rating all the Conjuring films (including the extended universe and a bonus near the end) would be a decent one to rock with. By choice, I don’t know a lot about the Warrens outside of the knowledge that they were frauds who preyed on superstitious people in bad situations. That being said, I’m going to try not to talk about that in these reviews. Instead we’re going to focus on one of the biggest franchises that horror has seen since the ’80s, The Conjuring.
When I first saw The Conjuring in 2015 or so I remember being blown away. I had (accidentally) been delving very heavily into incredibly low-budget and indie horror, so seeing something that was actually backed by a studio was pretty fantastic. Bigger actors, larger sets, better cameras, fun lighting, and generally smoother execution really managed to cement this as an incredibly strong first experience.
The story in this is simple. You’ve seen it before in Amityville (another Warren case), and since it’s the most basic haunting style story out there, I’m sure you’ll see it again. A family buys a new house, and there are elements of the house (in this case, a basement) that they didn’t know existed. Very quickly the haunting turns their lives upside down and they call in our “professional demonologists” Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga). They quickly diagnose the family with “evil entity disease,” and since waiting isn’t an option they also handle the situation themselves. The story itself is a classic formula, but what helps it stand out is the film understanding the need for enjoyable characters, letting the haunted family take center stage for a majority of the time. Ed and Lorraine’s story arc is fun and all, but I wouldn’t think this movie was nearly as good if I hadn’t been steeped in the mess of what the family was going through. Even the relatively bare-bones setup we get is enough to hold this together cleanly to the finish.
Over the last couple years I’ve had my feelings on the film slip slightly, but it’s never been enough to make me hate it, or even dislike it. The film manages to maintain an incredibly strong atmosphere from front to back, even though some of the dialogue can get a little cringey at times. Moments where the Warrens are explaining different haunting techniques are deeply embarrassing to hear aloud, made even funnier with the deeply serious faces they make while they say the lines. Luckily for the viewer, those scenes happen incredibly quickly and we don’t have to sit with them. The rest of the adventure is decently solid fare, focusing on the important things and keeping jumpscares to a minimum. With tighter pacing than you might expect from an almost-two-hour film, The Conjuring burns through a majority of its runtime without leaving too many moments for you to sit and wonder, “When is this going to end?”
The clear standout scene of the film is the final fifteen or so minutes with the exorcism. More specifically, the parts of the scene taking place in the harsh single bulb lighting of the basement. The blood on the sheet, the blown-out skin tones, and the wildly swinging shadows pop in ways you wouldn’t get otherwise. You know it—it’s the kind of stuff James Wan is great with. Even if the rest of the movie was the most middling experience (which in my opinion it isn’t), it would be worth watching just for the exorcism. Our antagonist in the witch Bathsheba (Joseph Bishara) builds her presence the entire film, and by the time the conflict has resolved she’s crescendoed into an incredibly fun and scary villain. The awkward lines about knocking three times as an insult to the Holy Trinity or pledging her fealty to her lord Satan can’t harm her character, since she never speaks on her motivations.
The first entry here is so incredibly solid, not holding back as much as you might expect from something this mainstream. While this is a relatively tame R rating for what we know horror can get away with, the film can reach a larger audience this way. It’s honestly shocking this isn’t just a hard PG-13, because this is a film built to bring in a teen audience. For me, that’s the clear appeal of this franchise. We’ve peppered real-world characters into a story that, even though it’s been generally wrapped up as a hoax, still has some threads and lines to sift through in your free time. Coming out in the beginning of the era of “lore guys,” The Conjuring is a perfect storm for paranormal history people, budding horror fans, and people who like to know just a little too much about the given thing they’re watching. Each item in the Warrens’ room is a potential story, and between The Nun and Annabelle we’ve gotten a lot of side things for people to latch onto. Tense, with a semi-interconnected story, the Conjuring franchise is almost the perfect way to let kids get into some slightly heavier horror. This is probably the scariest film of the franchise, so if you can handle this then you should be safe to visit the other ones.