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Posted: Friday, July 19, 2013, 3:01 AM
MOVIE horror in "house hunters" America often takes the form of a really bad real-estate deal.
Ideally, you want the least haunted house in the nicest neighborhood.
Not that property in Amityville.
Or that modern "Poltergeist" split-level, built above a cursed cemetery.
Now comes "The Conjuring," an enjoyably scary and very timely haunted-house yarn about Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor), who invest all of their meager savings in an old Victorian, only to find it inhabited by homicidal demons. (The movie is said to be fact-based, but the truest thing about it is the idea of being stuck with a bad investment).
Trouble starts immediately. When the family plays hide and seek, spirits join in. Spectral bodies hang from trees, ghosts stare out from mirrors, visions of dead children slide beneath the surface of the nearby pond.
Talk about being underwater.
As demons torment the couple's three vulnerable daughters, the Perrons want to leave, but can't - their money is tied up in a now-unsellable house. And in any case, the evil means to follow them wherever they go - like a bad credit rating follows foreclosure.
This latter news is delivered by demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga), hired by the homeowners to explain the strange phenomena.
Farmiga, as far as I can see, cannot put a foot wrong as an actress. While I think she needs to make more movies like "Up in the Air," she brings life to whatever character she inhabits. Here, as the medium who loses more of herself each time she channels a home's evil spirits, she makes you feel like something is actually on the line.
Wilson? I have to say I have a hard time getting past his phlegmatic façade, and when you put him next to Livingston in a movie, it's like watching two guys OD on beta blockers.
But, really, the movie is James Wan's show. Wan is the guy who directed the "Saw" movies - definitive in their own way, of a grisly brand of sado-horror, and as documents of the every-man-for-himself 1990s.
Wan has moved on to something more subtle and more challenging - the old-school horror of "Insidious," finding something creepy in everyday objects: dolls, music boxes, cracked mirrors.
He succeeds, even as he applies his usual energy. His camera looks like it's being operated by Tony Hawk, but the crazy movement feels right for the story, and Wan's use of music is original and effective.
The movie goes a bit bonkers in the end - it's never a good idea to try to top William Friedkin - but by then it's won us over.
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